46 
House & Garden 
DECORATIVE TILES INSIDE AND OUT THE HOUSE 
The Banal and Hideous Products of a Previous Generation Have 
Been Supplanted hy Really Beautiful Creations 
HANNA TACHAU 
A garden wall entirely constructed of glazed tile would be undesirable, but when tile 
is mixed with other mediums it produces a charming effect out-of-doors. The rough 
stone of this garden wall is relieved by the tile insert of the swan and other parts 
of the fountain 
I N the dark era of ugliness from which 
we have just emerged, so many materials, 
both decorative and utilitarian, were mis¬ 
conceived and misapplied that to our own 
age has fallen the privilege of reviving and 
bringing back to recognition some of the arts 
which were known and utilized so gloriously 
in the past. During the discouraging period 
of yellow oak and commer¬ 
cial stained glass, many of 
us received our conception 
of tiles from the hard, 
highly glazed products that 
were manufactured in those 
days, whose sole claim to 
recognition was their hy¬ 
gienic qualities which rele¬ 
gated them to the bathroom 
and kitchen. 
But we are now begin¬ 
ning to realize the infinite 
possibilities of tiles when 
they are used distinctly as a 
decorative . factor in the 
home, and as our under¬ 
standing of and delight in 
color and texture grow, we 
will more fully appreciate 
this plastic material. 
Tile Making Progress 
In the last thirty years or 
so, America has been pro¬ 
ducing tiles that give the 
craftsman scope for perma¬ 
nent artistic expression, and 
also make it possible for 
these delightful bits of pot¬ 
tery to lend themselves to a 
more imaginative and deco¬ 
rative treatment. Formerly, 
what is known as “dry 
press tile” — those pressed 
from a die by machine— 
were manufactured for utili¬ 
tarian purposes, and, as in 
all machine-made products, 
their surface is both hard 
and unsympathetic; but the 
plastic tile allows the crafts¬ 
man freely to model his de¬ 
sign in the clay, and tiles 
emanating from these hand¬ 
made moulds possess unique 
individuality and charm. 
The Grueby Pottery Com¬ 
pany was perhaps the first 
in this country to attempt to 
design tiles that would re¬ 
deem their rather negligible 
reputation and place them 
once more in the acknowl¬ 
edged position they once 
Realism and Beauty 
Though he introduces hu¬ 
man figures and objects as¬ 
sociated with human life, 
and often tells a story or 
traces the progress of a life 
of a people, as is depicted 
in the pavement of the 
Pennsylvania State Capitol, 
Mr. Mercer always creates 
his effects by presenting the 
decorative scheme as a 
whole, the details becoming 
but a part of the ceramic 
tracery; and when one looks 
more closely, one finds not 
realistic presentations of 
people and things, but sug¬ 
gestive forms that are es¬ 
sentially decorative in char¬ 
acter. Thus, when the 
individual units of design 
are placed in their setting of 
concrete, the effect is like 
the scintillating brocade pat¬ 
terns in ancient tiles, yet 
with a freer play of light. 
The Rookwood Potteries, 
so well known in the ar¬ 
tistic world for their unique 
and beautiful departures in 
ceramics, have also de¬ 
voted their energies to the 
production of tiles that are 
perhaps more delightful in 
design than varied in tex¬ 
ture, but their colors, rich in 
occupied. The soft dull finish, so velvety in 
texture, was accomplished by firing, which was 
a distinct departure from methods hitherto 
employed, and the modeling then, as now, was 
done by hand. But it is to the scientific ex¬ 
periments of Mr. Henry Mercer, archaeologist, 
anthropologist, traveler, explorer, curator of 
American and prehistoric archaeology at the 
University of Pennsylvania, who afterwards 
became a master potter, that we owe our first 
real revival in tile making. When gathering 
together a collection of apparatus used by the 
early Pennsylvania German potters for the 
Bucks County Historic Society, he became 
keenly interested in resuscitating their beauti¬ 
ful but lost art and in the process of experi¬ 
mentation, in which Mr. 
Mercer himself learned to 
master the potter’s craft, he 
determined to carry out his 
tests in his own potteries. 
He soon found that the na¬ 
tive red clay, too soft for 
making clay household 
utensils, was splendidly 
adapted for tile making, 
and he felt that, with the 
restoration of open fire¬ 
places in the home, there 
was a growing need for or¬ 
namental tiles rich in color 
and interesting in design 
and texture. 
