Tile File History

The list of tilemakers and makers of architectural ceramics marks one of the most significant, but sadly almost forgotten pieces of research first undertaken in the Society’s name.  Francis Celoria will be remembered by many TACS ‘old timers’ as both a highly popular and a highly influential first chairman.  I will leave it to his own introduction to set out the origins of the project and the critical role of the Gladstone Pottery Museum.  His introduction is also a fascinating reminder of the level of Information Technology that was still in general use in the mid-1980s when the now universal PC was only one of many alternatives.

Sadly for the future of the project Francis moved on to other things whilst the technology foundered leaving only printed versions of the List in its wake.

Thankfully, technology has once more come to the rescue with the availability of low cost scanners and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.  This current version is based on a printout of 4 July 1985.

Based on, because this is not a facsimile of the original.  ‘Find and replace’ techniques have made it easy to substitute for example Information for Info and reduce the telegraphese, as Francis called it, of the original.  Throughout this edition, information on registered designs has come from the research Diana and I undertook in the early 1980s.  Let this statement suffice!

A further change is that I have removed the strange codings that Francis attached to each record, since their meaning is now lost in obscurity.

By and large, the information itself has not been altered and still represents what was known in 1985, although Chris Blanchett, who kindly undertook the proof reading of the scanned document, has also contributed a number of small amendments, updates and even a few new entries. For the future, Francis’ appeal for readers to contribute to and expand the list can only be echoed by myself.  If you find anything missing or in error the remedy is in your hands. If the entry for a famous firm has only three lines based on a general reference book, please write a masterly and succinct version that you can sign with pride.

Peter Clegg, December 1999

This list is a continuing compilation whereby various references to tile makers and manufacturers of architectural ceramics can be kept together. Such materials might be kept in files or on index cards and remain forever in unsystematic obscurity. It is unlikely that knowledgeable persons could be cornered for long enough to examine material thoroughly and then to correct and add to the existing information. Accordingly it was decided to use a computer to produce a descriptive list of tilemakers that could be updated without the inconvenience and errors caused by continuous re-typing.

It is best to be frank as to the origins of the list. We began by going through the publications of the Austwicks, Barnard, Furnival, Godden, Jewitt, Lockett and others. The existence of works was indicated by the initials of these sources. Thus names, dates and details would be followed by such initials as L, or A, L, G and so on. To this we added information from Glazed Expressions (GE) and later JTACS. Next when we found references in old catalogues, Pottery Gazettes, the archives of the firms of Emery and Wenger and other sources, we entered a new piece of information in the manner of filling a Christmas stocking or a traditional sausage. Sequential logic does not result from such a stuffing method, but the material is safe for the day when one wishes to edit or revise an entry.

The members and committee of the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society good-humouredly added their learned additions from time to time. We are indebted to the committee and to such sterling suppliers of information as the Betty and John Greene, G. K. Beulah, J. Merilion, Hans van Lemmen, David Malkin, Peter Clegg. Some entries became miniature treatises while other insertions narrowly escape a charge of frivolity, so tenuous and trivial is the information contained in them. But the remedy is in your hands. If the entry for a famous firm has only three lines based on a general reference book, please write a masterly and succinct version that you can sign with pride. It is important to vary the names acknowledged since the numerous short entries by Peter Clegg will get him the blame for faults in the parts he has not touched! One should also recall here the efforts made by Ann Robson and Claire Lowen to prepare various versions of the text for the computer.

Each entry should ideally consist of four components based on the four keywords, Who? Where? When? What?

WHO?             Names or names of firm or maker or artist

WHERE?        Addresses and names of works and showrooms at various periods

WHEN?          Ideally date of foundation with final date, if available. Dates should cover different locations

WHAT?          What was made, types of tiles, terracottas etc. At present we have many dustbin entries into which all available information has been shoved in. But the final edited version should be a succinct history with a basic summary of the range of products made by the works

Each entry will contain references or a bibliography. Sometimes a reference to one publication may contain most available references (as with Jon Catleugh’s book on De Morgan) while in other entries it may be necessary to string together a variety of sources which have not been brought together before.

This is a long but not technically incomprehensible story since the list was started before computer services became available and programmers had to grapple with several false starts made by compilers of the list. The late Deryk Marlow started us off with a Commodore computer and Judith Hodkinson and Dr John Wilcock worked out some of the problems of data handling. Then came along Tim Hunt followed by a Burroughs B21-45 machine. Despite the fact that the arrangements of the list of makers changed daily, Tim worked out a program (that’s how we must spell the word in computing) in BASIC language that enabled entries to be updated with relative ease by a lay person. More important is the retrieval system, which enables us to use keywords to recover names of tileworks with a common feature, or to select a pottery by name or by some other term used in the text. One can ask for a read-out or a print-out of all entries with the word ‘encaustic’ or combinations of ‘Burslem’ with a date range, or all references from a named source. The printer can print out a selection according to keywords or else it can spew out the fifty or so pages that formed the total list at the time of writing this.

Despite the good points of the BASIC program which was as user friendly as possible, people got into alarming knots when following the procedures of updating. Volunteers and staff who could use the Burroughs as a word processor without any difficulties, asked whether the powerful Burroughs word processor program could be used for editing, updating and carrying out various repeat operations for replacing words and phrases. One could with the word processor move a sentence in a wrong position to the correct position many pages away. Tim Hunt in less than a day set up a system which has been likened to riding a motorbike and a horse with one leg on each. Now we do all our updating and editing with the word processor program, but all sorting, searching, indexing and structuring is done with a BASIC program.

It is difficult to obtain compatibility for a program on different makes of machines housed in different museums. But eventually we may be able to send out a copy of a diskette to another museum for printing out and (one hopes) local updating without too many editing disasters. At this stage readers are begged to leave the Gladstone to get on with central editing until someone comes up with a better system and takes things off our hands.

Our FACIT printer is a faithful, plodding workhorse, but it is not one of the worlds fastest peripherals, running at about 40 characters per second. This might sound fast to one-finger typists, but in reality one has to listen to a long, noisy chuntering by the printer.

We can do some printouts on the back of used computer paper, when it is available, but nice, clean versions on paper of A4 size cost money. The BASIC program laconically prints out the costs of the printout just made. Thus an A4 version printed 23 Feb. 1984 supplied entries, using 108 thousand characters on the ribbon (l57p) and used 52 sheet units (55p) The total was 2l2p. The next version had 129000 characters. So there will come a time when a print-out will be a quarterly or annual treat. The computer printout also requests the recipient to look at the envelope to see the cost of the stamp! Apparently the envelope is free. If people want regular printouts they are requested to look at the end and make a contribution. There is no profit made whatsoever and it would not be proper to make even a few coppers with such a preliminary document. So we leave it to you.

At present copies are made available to some committee members of the society and to advisers and consultants who have furnished large quantities of information. At this stage there is no question of being righteous about copyright or piracy. Knowledge should be available to all. But one does not wish to steal the thunder of members who have made information freely available from their own future publications. So please let us have your views. Remember that museums like the Gladstone have to be seen to be generous with new knowledge so what do we do if a student says ‘my project is to make a catalogue of every British tile firm and its products’?

There are some folk who are not so concerned about decorative tiles and devote their interests to other aspects of building ceramics. Some of these persons have overtly declared an interest in chimney pots, roof finials, terracottas, ceramic sanitary fittings and drains for houses. They feel these strange inclinations deserve as much attention as do the researches of the students of matters encaustic. This is only right and we shall go on filling our computer files with anything we can get hold of relating to building ceramics. Purists need not mind since they will eventually be able to order printouts guaranteed not to mention drainage tiles or terracottas or chimney pots and other such depravities. At present non-tile references are minimal so that they will not clutter print-outs a great deal in 1984.