Object Details
- Description
- About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
- Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20^th^ century.
- About Faience Manufacturing Company: The Faience Manufacturing Company was an early commercial art pottery established in 1880 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. Initially, the factory produced cream-colored earthenware with underglaze painting in the style of the fashionable French faience and Limoges pottery; faience, the white tin-glazed earthenware used in France, inspired the company name. Four years later, the firm hired the well-known English potter Edward Lycett as decorator and director, and he introduced a new clay body and hard porcelain glaze. The Faience wares became known for their Near Eastern forms, eccentric handles, and elaborate jewel-like ornament; exotic imagery of Japanese birds and flowers was common. The larger pieces, often requiring more than one firing, resulted in their elevated status as expensive one-of-a-kind art objects. However, the pottery also produced smaller objects such as trays, perfume vases, and boxes. Lycett left the firm in 1890 when it was sold, and the firm closed in 1891.
- About the Object:
- A carved block of soap stone or Talc covered wtih an irridescent glaze in a sunken panel. A dolphin colored and glazed with an irridescent glaze of red-brown, green, brown, and blue with the form being carved in relief. Manufactured and decorated by Edward Lycett. This carved soapstone “test-tile” was believed by Lycett to be a rediscovery of the precious murrhine stone found by the Ancient Greeks and Romans. True murrhine came from Parthia and Caramaria. Supposedly a natural mineral, murrhine was said to be located in the veins of the earth, and after being carved into shapes it was baked. Murrhine was introduced in Rome at the Triumph of Pompeii when six vases and other specimens found among the treasures were exhibited. Philosopher and naturalist, Pliny the Elder, described this material as being layers of colored bands with crystal and gem deposits that played with the colors of the rainbow. False or imitation murrhine was made of glass at Alexandria in Egypt and sought to reproduce this rainbow effect. Lycett described this small tile as “Imitation of Precious Murrhine” after the rainbow iridescence of the glaze.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- maker
- Lycett, Edward
- date made
- 1889
- Credit Line
- Gift of Edward Lycett
- Physical Description
- purple (overall color)
- polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
- soapstone or talc (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 3/4 in x 1 1/2 in x 4 in; 1.905 cm x 3.81 cm x 10.16 cm
- overall: 3/4 in x 4 in x 1 9/16 in; 1.905 cm x 10.16 cm x 3.96875 cm
- Object Name
- tile
- Object Type
- tile
