Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Softcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> During the Middle Ages the floors of cathedrals churches cha- pels abbeys and monasteries were often paved with ceramic tiles decorated with a variety of figurative and geometric motifs. Scuffed and worn by roughshod worshippers through the centuries hidden from view by floors laid over them stolen piecemeal by un- scrupulous antiquarians or even broken up and sold as road metal true medieval paving tiles are rarely seen in their full glory. In the 1930’s Loyd Haberly undertook a study of floor tiles in ecclesiastical buildings in the region of Oxford England. He at- tempted to reconstruct the history and technique of tilemaking which “of all mediaeval crafts was the humblest its master- pieces being meant for the common tread.” His painstaking draw- ings most done in situ and reproduced by engravings in Mediaeval English Pavingtiles (published in a strictly limited edition) are the source of the present compilation. From Haberly’s now-inaccessible pictorial survey artist Carol Belanger Grafton has chosen over 160 of the finest and most versatile motifs for the use of modern artists and craftspeople. All of the designs she has selected are worked in squares most often as quadrants of circles within the four-sided format. Typically each page of this book includes a full showing of a tile pattern and a detail of it usually a quarter of the whole. This arrangement makes for instructive case studies in repeated pattern design as well as allow- ing for flexibility of application. This collection of authentic motifs from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries is especially rich in geometric ornament that preserves traces of influences from the Continent and the Mediterranean basin. There are examples of the lattice-work be- loved of the ancient Celts of the British Isles; mosaic-like patterns remunascent of Greek and Roman pavements; and compositions that resemble the rose windows of Gothic. (LL)