126 MEDIEVAL PAVEMENT AND WALL TILES OF DERBYSHIRE. 



used for a large tile, and vice versa. Examples will be readily 

 observed in the plates. 



The ornamentation of old encaustic tiles is always consistent. 

 No shading gives rise to an impression that any of the details are 

 in relief. The designers believed that the prime requirement or 

 a good pavement was flatness ; and so their decorative treatment 

 was flat. When walking upon its delineations of natural objects — 

 birds, beasts and foliage— we do not walk upon pictures ; they are 

 coventionally expressed. There is no attempt to disguise its con- 

 struction : the tile is directly or indirectly the unit of decorative 

 arrangement, which in consequence is geometrical or "set," and 

 not free or flowing. There is also an aesthetic reason for this : a 

 so-called " set " pattern accentuates the immobility of a pave- 

 ment, while flowing lines, highly suitable for drapery and hangings, 

 have a weakening effect. Looked at from the standpoint of their 

 decoration, the tiles we are dealing with, whether inlaid, enamelled, 

 incised, or embossed, fall into several more or less overlapping 

 groups. First are those in which the individual quarry displays a 

 device decoratively complete in itself. Nos. 2, 7, 9, plate A ; 

 3, C ; and 12, F, may be cited as typical examples. In combina- 

 tions, these were chiefly used alternately with plain quarries, or as 

 diapers, for which Nos. 10, 13, plate E, were especially adapted. 

 Some of the bilateral devices, as No. 3, plate A, and all the 

 armorial tiles of plate D, are diagonally placed. It is probable 

 that their designers, more often than not, intended these tiles to 

 be laid in fours, so arranged as to display the devices crosswise. 

 So arranged, the fleur-de-lys tiles would have the eff"ect, on a larger 

 scale, of tile No. 5. plate B. In the next stage, a device decora- 

 tively complete in itself is spread over several tiles, usually a 

 square of four or sixteen. The decorative framework of these 

 tablets usually takes the form of a more or less ornate circle, or 

 quatrefoil, or combination of the two The angular spaces or 

 spandrels outside the framework are generally filled in with 

 foliage springing out of it, and the field within is also occasionally 

 so decorated, as in the beautiful sixteen-tile tablet, No. 1, plate C ; 

 but as a rule it is independently treated, as in Nos. 2, 4, 8, plate B, 



