134 MEDIEVAL FLOOR TILES. 



now placed before you on the illustration sheets, which I should 

 like you to study as we proceed. 



I must first of all crave your indulgence while I say a word 

 concerning the much-neglected history of this branch of 

 ceramic art ; and no one can have felt more keenly than I have 

 the need of some such assistance as a handbook on floor tiles 

 would supply. But no such publication has hitherto appeared, 

 so that I have been constrained to obtain information from a few 

 articles in the Gentleman's Magazine (of the dates 1789 and 

 1833), short paragraphs in Parker's Glossary of Architecture 

 and Boutell's British Archaeology, another in the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica, and last, but not least, an excellent paper on the 

 Worcestershire floor tiles by Canon Porter, who kindly lent me 

 his unprinted manuscript. 



When were figured tiles first made ? The answer is that 

 they are one of the earliest forms of hieroglyphic and artistic 

 ornamentation. They may be traced back more than a thousand 

 years before the Christian era to the clay tablets of Tel-el- 

 Amarna. They are even mentioned in the Holy Bible, for there 

 the Prophet Ezekiel [Chapter iv., i] twenty-five centuries ago, 

 was thus addressed by the Almighty : " Thou also, son of man, 

 " take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the 

 " city, even Jerusalem." Now this tile, bearing the design of the 

 Holy City in a state of siege, was to be exhibited as an object 

 lesson to educate, a warning to stimulate, and an inspiration to 

 attract the people of Israel. And is not this the same purpose 

 the old Romans of Durnovaria had in mind when they laid those 

 wonderful tesselated pavements for which our county is justly 

 famous ? Mediaeval floor tiles were a natural evolution from 

 these earlier prototypes, though the differences between them 

 are considerable. Tesserae and tiles, besides, of course, differing 

 in size, are quite the converse of one another in application ; in 

 the case of the former the designing talent of the artist came to 

 the front only when the floor was in the laying ; whereas in the 

 case of the latter the maker of the materials was himself the 

 artist, so that with such tiles a comparative amateur or local 



