Remarkable sets that have passed through Relic Asylum and gone on to new homes — kept for their stories, and as a reference for anyone identifying or hunting a set of their own.
A complete fireplace surround by the United States Encaustic Tile Company — cherry blossoms across the field, and the two children at the corners that collectors almost always meet as orphans. You see those children all the time, sold one at a time, stripped of context. What you rarely see is the whole surround they…
On a country path, under a soft crackled sky, a fair-haired boy in a blue jacket and brown breeches reaches toward a man in a tall hat and apron, his pie-case balanced on a folding stand. Behind them a village rolls down to a church spire and a stand of autumn trees. It is the…
A rarely-seen Egyptian-revival surround by the American Encaustic Tiling Company — figures and fruit in the distinctive Egyptian idiom, a design you can go years without seeing once, let alone as a complete surround. Egyptian-revival ran through American decorative arts in waves across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but surviving tile in this theme…
People sometimes think “tiles with past lives” is just a turn of phrase. This is the set that proves it isn’t. The set A fireplace surround by the United States Encaustic Tile Company of Indianapolis — soft floral relief glazed a warm rose-terracotta, its blossoms a mix of roses, cherry, and dahlia, with a decorative…
Three tiles, read left to right like a sentence: a hound crouched low among the reeds; a robed woman reclining on a bank, one hand fallen to the head of a dog at her side; and a tall hound standing alert against the brush. All of it modeled in deep relief and washed in a…