[52895] Derby Museum : De Morgan Tiles

Derby Museum & Art Gallery, The Strand, Derby.

Tin glazed earthenware tiles, c1872-1907.

Designed by William De Morgan (1839-1917).

 

William De Morgan was one of the most famous designers of tiles from the Arts and Crafts Movement, of which he was a founder member. He painted in a Pre-Raphaelite style, designed stained glass and became a novelist. He began his career as a stained glass designer, and only later became a potter, supplying William Morris from his home in Chelsea, London. He then moved to a pottery works in Merton in 1881-82 and then to Fulham in 1886. He married Evelyn Pickering, the Pre-Raphaelite painter, in 1887. During the Fulham period De Morgan experimented with glazes and rediscovered methods of making the intense greens and blues used in Majolica wares. He used these techniques in his own designs and became famous for his complex lustres and deep, intense underglaze painting. In 1907 William De Morgan left the pottery works and continued his life as a successful novelist.

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