Tiled Furniture

At the Great Exhibition of 1851, English manufacturers showed furniture in which ceramic plaques painted at the Worcester factory were used. As tiles became more readily available, pictorial and patterned tiles were used as decoration and protection on a range of items throughout the house, from bedroom wash-stands to hall-stands, tile screens, pot-stands and flower boxes. The author describes and illustrates the variety of material used in conjunction with tiles, the range of prevailing styles, from Gothic to Anglo-Japanese, with which they were combined, the furniture manufacturers producing tiled pieces, and the tilemakers themselves.