Information about cloisonné tiles | Back to homepage | In the past several nice books about - among other things - the history of the Royal Delft factory "De Porceleyne Fles" ( The Porcelan Bottle) have been appeared. I don't have to do that again! I only want to give a small overview to give you some background about cloisonné tiles! History PF cloisonné tiles The Porceleyne Fles had been established at 1653 en was situated in a property at the Oosteinde Delft. The property is still there. At that time the PF was only one of the very many pottery bakeries in the south part of our nice town at the circumstance of the streets "Oosteinde" and "Molslaan". The pottery bakeries at that time could stay alive - in the middle of 17e century - due to the fact that import from Chinese porcelan from the far east ended. The PF however never made porcelan, only earthwork. Many of those factories had lots of problems to overwin difficult times and couln't stay alive specially throuhg concurrency from Englesh pottery bakeries. Only "De Porceleyne Fles" was strong enough to stay as eartwork factory. This probably due to the fact they started producing building firefest ceramic products in the 19e century. In 1876 Joost Thooft was the buyer of the PF factory. Later on he started working together very strong with Adolf Le Comte. More later on also Abel Labouchere was starting working at the factory. Around 1900 the production of items was fully replaced to "De Rotterdamseweg". From this time many new crystalising glaces were developed by Mauser. Lots of progress was reached due to designs of Bodart, Arum and Oosterloo. Cloisonné tiles were made from 1907 until 19777. Production had stopped - due to factory technical reasons - in 1977. Due to the very intensiv handwork and the high labour costs it wasn't reality to go on producing. It's a pity that the PF not had kept up his administration in a good way. A lot of things about cloisonné tiles will stay unknown. In the archives is less to find like numbers of tiles, designers and productionyears. Introduction cloisonné tiles "Cloison" is the Franch word for higher part, dike or part between. Do we take a look at the base product - a creme coloured tie - with at the frontside an uncoloured image then we can see the higher parts very well( See picture). Those higher parts have the meaning to separate the diffent colours on the tile. Later on I will explain the production proces!The different cloisonné items are easily to divide in four catagories! - Displaytiles with different topics. Those tile have mostly a brown border and two hanging holes - Displaytiles with coat of arms Also this tiles have mostly a brown border and two hnging eyes - Msonry tiles Tiles without a border meaned to be laced in a wall - Objects Plates, ashtrays and other items Raw materials A cloisonné tile had been produced of cloisonné- or ormament earth. This earth exists of : - different kind of earth - fine chamotte clay - finaly refractory rubble Tools Many different tools were used for producing this tiles: - Templates or carbon copy - Charcoal dot (flannel cloth) - Pens and scrapers - Fan brush for production of the borders - Plaster- or rubber mold - later on a tile press - Iron or pouleer knife - Woman seringe Craftsman For production of those tiles you need to have several people with the needed craftmanship. Each of those people had a very clear separated task. You have then thinking about: - Designers - Modelmakers or plaster casters - painters or glazers Preparatorywork mother- and working tiles - Unengraved shape of cast - Appy drawing using graved lines produce a mothershape - Producing more working shapes using clay Productionproces real cloisonné tile The productionprces exists of several steps, dezcribed below: - Designdrawing - Approval or isapproval of the design - Producing worktiles - See above - Pressing real cloisonné tiles - Drying the produced tiles Bisquittile - Adding different glazing using the designdrawing - Bakery 1e phase Possibly additional - Ading red and/or gold glaze - Bakery 2e fase Marks Cloisonné displaytiles have at the backside always a pressed mark. Before 1945 alway a bottle with the signs TL was used. Those signs stans for Thooft and Labouchere, the two directors of the factory in that period. After 1945 sometimes the bottle was used with the letter J below it. This J stands for Joost Thooft Below are visible the two used marks. Masonry tiles mostly never had a mark at the backsite except when the tiles had been made for the foreign markets. Then sometimes a mark as written obove or painted with ink! More information will be described later on! | Back to startpage |
