Connoisseurship, tiles and the OM1n

click photo to enlarge

I often think there is a fine line between connoisseurship and obsession, and that both are capable of distorting, rather than refining, judgement. That thought first struck me many years ago when I glanced at one of the many television programmes about antiques. A couple of experts were discussing the merits of a small, eighteenth century, china figurine that depicted a coy shepherdess, complete with lamb, who was being courted and gazed on adoringly by a young man. The discussion ranged over the quality of the representation, the fineness of the detail in the painting, the provenance of the piece, how it compared with others by the same maker and different makers, and much else. After listening to this for a while, and looking at the comparable figurines that were also being shown, an "Emperor's New Clothes" moment came upon me and I found myself wanting to interject and say, "But they are ALL meretricious, sentimental tat. That's what they were the day they were made, and that's what they remain today." It seemed to me that their connoisseurship had caused them to lose all perspective on the real qualities of the pieces under discussion.

What I don't deny, however, is that familiarity with a set of objects, to the point of connoisseurship, does give one perspective within that set, even if it can sometimes blind one to the overall value of them. Take a case in point. I have looked at and studied the floor tiles and mosaics of churches for many years. Every church I visit I note the tiles and mosaics. This familiarity has given me a frame of reference that allows me to see any that depart from the norm and any which, in my judgement rise above the average. In the field of church floor tiles and mosaics, as with most man-made artefacts, the bell-shaped curve can be applied to the quality of the output, with most being competent, fewer being less than competent, and some showing greater imagination and quality.

Today's photograph shows the mosaic floor in the church at Bishop Wilton, East Yorkshire. It dates from 1902 and represents the tail end of Arts and Crafts. Its linear, almost Rococo style, with birds rather than medieval or overtly religious motifs, makes it very unusual for an English church. Its origins suggest why this should be so. Though it was designed by the English architect, Temple Moore, it is said to be based on a design in the Vatican, and was manufactured by the Venetian company of Salviati. When I saw it the design immediately caught my eye and I was favourably impressed to the point where I took this photograph of it. The coloured patches of light from the stained glass added a further dimension to my image. That was in August 1986! This photograph was taken using an Olympus OM1n with the Zuiko 50mm 1.8 lens and slide film. I recently passed the slide through my new, dedicated slide and negative scanner that I recently bought, and I was sufficiently pleased with the digitized result to post it.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus OM1n
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: N/A
Shutter Speed: N/A
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  N/A
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Deceiving the eye

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The main photograph in today's entry shows the floor in the choir at Beverley Minster, East Yorkshire. In the smaller image you can see the floor in context*. The three-dimensional effect was achieved by the early eighteenth century restorers using four different colours of marble set in such a way that they suggest cubes. It is hard to imagine anything more different from the small, symmetrically patterned floor tiles that medieval builders favoured for such locations, and which came back into favour during the Victorian period. Yet, one of the marks of the styles in our great churches is that each generation tended to employ that which was fashionable at the time, and the eighteenth century loved this kind of thing.

The Arts and Crafts Movement of the second half of the nineteenth century abhorred such illusionism. They felt that flat surfaces should not be made to appear three-dimensional, that such trickery wasn't being true to either the surface or the materials. I was thinking about this as I photographed the floor, and also when I pointed my camera upwards at the underside of the crossing tower. It's something of a paradox, I thought, that from this point of view the vaulting looks very flat, linear, a touch Rococco even, and the perfectly flat floor looks like it is constructed of angular cubes. Of course, when you position yourself to one side of the crossing, as I did for my earlier photograph, the ceilings' curves, ribs and soaring arches reveal the architecture to be very sculptural. Similarly, a walk down the choir soon reveals the "blockiness" to be smooth, shiny and flawless, a tribute to the workmanship and chosen materials of three hundred years ago.

*Note: choir is used in the architectural sense to mean the place where the choir would sit and services were sung.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tiles and styles

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It's nothing short of criminal that tiles, a wall and floor covering that is made to last, should be subject to the capricious fancies of fashion, and that people should feel pressured to regularly change the perfectly sound surfaces of their kitchens, bathrooms and showers. Anyone who has lived through the last fifty years can very easily assign a tile to the decade in which it was manufactured. From the mottled beige of 1950s fireplace tiles, through the "cracked ice" tiles in sage, turquoise and pink of the 1970s, to the small fabric-backed mosaics of the turn of the millennium and the elongated "stone" of today, the pernicious march of fashion seems, ridiculously, to affect durable tiles just as much as more flimsy housewares, clothing and vehicles.

Was it always so? Not really. The Romans introduced tiles to Britain in the form of mosaic flooring, and many examples of their figurative and decorative designs can be seen in museums. But it was not until the monasteries of the middle ages wanted to floor their buildings with something better than trodden earth, rushes and stone, that floor tiles became common again. Their pattern-impressed and slip-decorated designs using symmetrical crosses, circles, part circles, birds, shields, etc remained, to the untutored eye, much the same for a few hundred years. And, the beauty of what they produced so appealed to the Gothic Revival architects of the nineteenth century that they faithfully copied many of these earlier designs.

Today's photograph shows the font and some of these Victorian tiles in the medieval church of St Mary, Swineshead, Lincolnshire. The fact that the designs of such tiles derive directly from medieval examples, or from catalogues of drawings of early tiles such as Parker's "Glossary of Architecture" (1840), and from original designs that often re-worked the motifs of the middle ages, makes identifying the manufacturer quite difficult to anyone but an enthusiast. As in many British churches those at Swineshead are probably made by Minton, but could well be by Campbell, Maw, Godwin or one of the smaller makers. Victorian tiles are commonly found in the chancel, the most sumptuously decorated part of a church. Here at Swineshead they were also deemed suitable for the area around the font, reflecting its importance as the place where a Christian is received into the the church through baptism. I was attracted to this shot by the sunlight streaming through a clear glass window, illuminating the font and its surrounds, throwing a lattice of shadows over everything, and leaving the background in relative gloom.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -3.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On