Customer Reviews

Old English Tile Designs for Artists and Craftspeople (Dover Pictorial Archives)

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There are 150 floor tile designs from medieval cathedrals and monasteries rendered in black&white. Lots of animals, dragons, griffins, and fleur-de-lis. There are also face images of kings, jesters, etc.

All designs are shown in decent (maybe actual?) tile size (around 4-5 inches square), as well as in groups of four (or more if required), to show how repeats would work. All designs are very bold and simple, but amazing when placed in repeat.

Nice designs for beginning tile makers to use, since the designs can be easily worked in clay. Well worth the cost of the book.

As the Master of the Saint Caitlin's Guild of Hairy Potters, I have been teaching classes in the crafts of the Middle Ages, including the making of the tiles in the retro Quire at Winchester. This handy little volume allows the copying of designs for everyone in the class, with a range of easy to difficult, and scaled to produce four inch tiles allowing for clay shrinkage.
All my work is done for me. All I have to do now . . .is teach.

This is an informative book loaded with many, many nice, easy designs to replicate or gain ideas from. Some of the illustrations seem rudimentary and uneven, not professionally finished, but if you can overlook that fact and "crisp up" or perfect the drawings yourself it would be a great asset to your collection.
Otherwise, I like this book and will refer to it many times in the future.