- Style/technique: Floral stencilled**
- Manufacturer: Geo Wooliscroft & Son
- Pattern number: 318A
- Dimensions: 6" x 6"
- Date: circa 1885
A good floral design in the aesthetic layout the
central design perhaps being described as having 'arts
& crafts styling'. The floral design emanates from a
stylised pot and is retained within an eastern style
cartouche, surrounded by foliate fronds and with
flowerhead motifs in the corners. In six colours,
decorated with a most unusual technique and brilliantly
glazed.
This technique is often described as aerography, a
confusing term mostly used and described in dictionaries
as study of the atmosphere but in these instance used as
a rather fanciful name for the widely understood process
of airbrushing. It was apparently used almost exclusively
by George Wooliscroft & Sons and on their tiles made
for Derwent Foundry Co of Derby.
However we believe that 'aerography' is a
misunderstanding, given the technology available at the
time, its cost and the relative cost of labour we believe
this is a more hand work process, on close inspection of
numerous examples it appears that the colours were
applied to transfer paper by sponging through stencils.
The effect is soft as is achieved by sponging, the
decoration on some examples has flaws indicative of
stencils such as elongated smudges and also has signs of
transfer printing such as creases in the transfer paper.
The logical conclusion is that the design was stencilled
on to transfer paper. It should be noted that decorating
on to transfer paper which was then applied to the tile
blank was more widely used than is generally understood,
many of the 'handpainted' William de Morgan & Co
tiles were painted on to transfer paper with the
assistance of an outline and so more accurately may be
described as traced and coloured, de Morgan even imported
transfers that were decorated in Italy.
One interesting quality of the technique is that fewer
colours were applied than appear on the finished product,
the lighter green is a combination of the blue and the
yellow, the darker green of blue and brown (brown is
simply dark yellow). The process is a fascinating example
of 19thC ingenuity surprisingly almost exclusive to
Wooliscroft although an example by Maw & Co has been
noted (which is unsurprising as Maws used more decorating
processes than any other company). The lack of
competitors using the same process suggests that it was
difficult to achieve good results.
Verso no mortar residue but a bit grubby and soot
stain along one edge. The pattern number is not shown on
this tile but is known from an example in the personal
collection.