Minute rim chips, light scratches lost in the
roses right side. Visible marks are manufacturing
flaws, the line in the print right side and the
extraneous smudges of white clay. Style/technique: Pictorial print An excellent work of art with a
pre-raphaelite picture of a naked young native
woman paddling a canoe and set against a
japanesque ground with asymmetric floral
elements. Printed in dark blue on olive drab
clay body. This is rather below par for Steele &
Wood in terms of manufacturing quality, super
quality artwork and engraving but a flaw in the
print the line near the right edge in the roses.
More noticable are the spots of white clay which
rather detract but are interesting for the
insight that they give in to manufacturing
difficulties of the times. Floor tile
specialists seem to have had little problem with
different colours of clay as widely used in
geometric pavements and floors, wall tile
specialists a different story. Mintons Ltd seem
to have brought their buff clay tiles in from
Campbell, Wedgwood sage clay tiles clearly are
from a different supplier to their white clay,
Sherwin & Cotton gave up with their sage
clay tiles around the time they retooled for
their patent locks. Clearly we see here the
problems of contamination of one colour of clay
with another, this was probably more of a
problem with white clay tiles having dust from
other colours embeded should cleaning up not be
pedantically executed. Usually such flawed tiles
would have been scrapped so it is rather a
mystery how it came to be decorated. Steele & Wood competed very much with
Mintons Ltd in the range of their tiles as with
Mintons mostly mechanically decorated litho
prints, block prints and monochrome majolica.
Steele & Wood's tiles of equal or better
quality to those of Mintons, more diverse
colours and techniques in their printing, and at
a more affordable price. One of a pair and in my
experience the other tile is seen quite
dramatically more frequently indeed recently I
saw a photo of a fireplace with ten of them. Steele & Wood tiles are often incorrectly
attributed to Wedgwood due to the similarity of
their rail grip patterns although they are
clearly different once one knows. The decorating
quality especially of pictorial prints by Steele
& Wood is superior to those of Wedgwood.
They are also at times wrongly attributed to
Mintons Ltd by virtue of the grid grip pattern
although this occurs much less frequently. Verso perfectly clean unmarked eight rail
grip pattern. * I have been researching Steele & Wood
for several years and am confident about most
things however there is another little recorded
company called Jackson Brothers tile
manufacturers in similar time frame, it is
possible that there is confusion between these
two companies. Austwick shows this tile and they
say by Mintons and also by Steele & Wood,
which I believe Mintons to be in error for
Steele & Wood also used a plain grid grip
pattern easily confused with the similar Mintons
Ltd grip pattern. Austwick's picture is reversed
(mirror image) to this and others I have
recorded. The image is full size at 72 dpi (about 430
pixels wide) in maximum quality JPEG format and on
screen is about the size as it would be in real
life at the same distance. A larger 120 dpi image
also in maximum quality JPEG format can be
forwarded by email if required. The image is a little oversize rather than
cropped close to the edges so that the edges can
easily be seen and any chips etc can be quickly
spotted. Other marks described are usually not
visible at all when the tile is viewed straight as
one normally sees it and can only be seen with a
critical eye when the tile is tilted to catch
imperfections in reflected light. For more details
of how we describe marks see Condition.
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