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• Style: Classical figures
• Technique: Hand pressed embossed
majolica
• Maker: Marc-Louis Solon
(designer)
• Maker: Mintons (factory)
• Dimensions: 16" x 6"
• Date: 1892 (circa)
A very rare and excellent hand moulded
embossed tile (or plaque) designed by Louis
Marc Emmanuel Solon for Mintons, featuring
two maidens in diaphanous robes, a putto and
a brazier. Of unusual dimensions and entirely
handmade being pressed in to the mould by
hand, finished in a wonderfully translucent
celadon glaze.
Marc-Louis Emmanuel Solon (1835 - 1913)
was one of several luminaries of the
continental porcelain industry attracted to
Mintons in the late nineteenth century. He
was reknowned for his pâte sur
pâte decoration and considered the
leading exponent of the technique which
entailed painting with thin layers of
porcelain paste to build relief thereby
creating a translucent effect unrivalled by
any other process. His pâte sur
pâte often featured classical maidens
and these tiles are typical of the style of
his work if not the technique. This tile, and
the matching
pair of vertical panels, are the only
tiles verified to be designed by his hand,
they, and the moulds, may well have also been
made by him.
Hand pressed in the studio rather than the
earthenware works it is however included in
the tile catalogue with the pattern number in
the embossed tile sequence rather than the
studio numbering sequence. This is to be
expected for very few tiles were hand moulded
by Mintons or indeed by any other company and
so did not naturally fit in to either of the
established numbering schemes.
Seen in the reprinted Mintons catalogue,
generally described as circa 1885 but for the
most part being from 1883 i.e. up to sheet
24. However the two photographic sheets
included are rather later dating from 1891
and the related comments in the introduction
erroneous the dating discrepancy apparently
not known to the writer. In a later catalogue
these sheets of embossed tiles are numbers 27
and 28.
Condition: Very fine
Price: £1200 (approx $1556)
Ref: 06181
Two pinpricks, two tiny inclusions in the
glaze (manufacturing flaws), very minor glaze
losses to the tip of the rim, other
exceedingly minor marks. Chips verso are in
manufacture, where the glaze spilled over it
stuck to the kiln furniture.
