Mediaeval floor tiles. - Wight, Jane A.

Bound, cloth with original dustjacket, 179pp., 16.5x24cm., ills. in b/w. and 4 plates in col., in good condition (dustjacket with light traces of use).
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975
Mediaeval floor tiles have been unjustly neglected both in print and in situ, and (this) book is, astonishingly, the first full-scale appreciation of the subject since 1858. The tiles themselves have been maltreated over the centuries and it is only comparatively recently that their great variety - and often beauty - and the sophistication of some of the methods of production have been appreciated. Some Victorian ceramic firms faultlessly and relentlessly copied a number of mediaeval designs - a compliment that Miss Wight shows the originals could well have done without as they were likely to be prised up to make way for the glossy nineteenth-century copies. The book described the methods of manufacture of the various types of mediaeval tile from the earliest mosaic to the elaboration of the later inlaid varieties, and traces the development of design in the main areas of tile making. Miss Wight has drawn many examples herself and the groups of illustrations in the book show clearly how a particular subject or symbol - for instance the fleur-de-lis of the Virgin Mary - was used and developed in an incredibly wide variety of ways. For the first time the mass of tiles is approached with an enthusiasm for their artistic achievement as well as their technical categorization, and the Gazetteer lists a comforting number of places where - if we take the trouble to look downward as well as upward - we can still see examples of most of the types of mediaeval tile.