Interiors by Design: Tiles

Most wall coverings such as tapestries, drapes and wallpaper aren’t designed for rooms that see arduous use, or get wet. For those an even older solution has stood the test of time, with baked clay or ceramic tiles. They have been widely used to protect the walls of wet areas like bathrooms, rooms where the walls need to be washed down frequently like kitchens, and in inns and bars. They may also be used instead of a wooden ‘skirting board’ at the base of an interior wall, where damp is a common problem.

The production of tin-glazed earthenware plates and tiles in the Low Countries started in about 1500 in the port of Antwerp, but when that city was sacked in 1576, most potters moved north. From about 1615, those in Delft developed distinctive products with blue decoration on a white base. When there was an interruption to the supply of Chinese porcelain in 1620, this Delftware was ready to take the market. By this time what had been earthenware had been refined to the point where it looked as good as expensive porcelain.

Delftware plates populated many shelves and dressers of the Dutch Golden Age, but most numerous were small tiles, produced by the million. Some houses in the Netherlands still have those Delft blue-on-white tiles dating from the seventeenth century. This article celebrates their appearance in paintings of interiors (mostly).

Inevitably, they feature in at least one of Jan Vermeer’s wonderful interiors.

Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), The Milkmaid (c 1660), oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm, The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

Vermeer’s Milkmaid from about 1660 shows a kitchen or house maid pouring milk from a jug, beside a tabletop with bread. Behind the bread is a dark blue studded mug with pewter lid, and just in front of the woman (to the right of the mug) a brown earthenware ‘Dutch oven’ pot into which the milk is being poured. The wall behind is white and bare apart from a couple of nails embedded towards its top, and several small holes where other nails once were. At its foot, at the bottom right, five Delft tiles run along the base. In front of those is a traditional foot-warmer, consisting of a metal coal holder inside a wooden case.

Several artists in the nineteenth century returned to similar interiors from the Dutch Golden Age.

Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate (1822–1891), A Soldier and Men in an Inn (date not known), watercolour, white body paint and black chalk on paper, 21.5 x 32.8 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

A Soldier and Men in an Inn is one of Herman Frederik Carel ten Kate’s period scenes, showing a room with the walls decorated by blue on white Delft tiles.

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911), The Seamstress (1850-88), oil on canvas, 75 × 61 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons.

Early in the career of the Dutch artist Jozef Israëls, he painted The Seamstress (1850-88) as a scene from the Golden Age. A young Dutchwoman works with her needle and thread in the light of an unseen window at the left. In the background to the right, there’s a group of Delft tiles on the wall, and there’s a single tulip in a glass vase at the left.

The greatest exponent of these views from history is Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema, wife of the renowned Victorian painter Sir Lawrence. Unlike her husband, who had been born in the Netherlands and trained in Antwerp, she came from London, but fell in love with these Dutch interiors.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), The Bible Lesson (date not known), oil on canvas, 64.8 × 50.8 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Her undated painting of The Bible Lesson is one of her earlier examples, and features an older woman teaching her young granddaughter from Biblical scenes depicted on the Delft tiles in her house.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), A Carol (date not known), oil on panel, 38.1 × 23.2 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Just as her husband Lawrence researched his classical paintings to achieve accuracy and authenticity, so Laura did the same for her historical paintings, such as A Carol (date not known), showing a group of children singing carols outside the door of what appears to be an apartment.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), A Knock at the Door (1897), oil on panel, 63.8 × 44.8 cm, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH. Wikimedia Commons.

A Knock at the Door (1897, Opus 90) is her most explicit painting in terms of dates. It’s set in 1684, during the period of peace between the Second Treaty of Westminster (1674) and Treaty of Nijmegen (1678), and the crisis in relations with England that arose in 1688. She has also not only provided an Opus number (90), but a date for her painting of 1897. This attractive young woman checks that she’s looking at her best in a mirror, presumably just before she receives a visitor. Lining the wall at floor level is a fine series of Delft tiles.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), In Good Hands (date not known), oil on canvas, 39 × 28.5 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Her undated In Good Hands is another period domestic interior, as one of the older daughters keeps watch over a younger brother as he sleeps in a four-poster bed beside his windmill toy. The girl rests her feet on a foot warmer similar to Vermeer’s as she sews to pass the time. To her right is a single Delft tile on the wall close to the floor.

Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema (1852–1909), Battledore and Shuttlecock (date not known), oil on canvas, 91.4 × 61 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

When I first saw Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema’s undated Battledore and Shuttlecock I was fascinated by its floor. Not so much the animal skin that seems ostentatious even for the rich, but its unique tiles decorated with a pattern based on the artist’s family monograms. This shows the predecessor to modern badminton, then often played indoors by young women wearing full dresses.

Delft tiles were by no means the only ceramics to be fixed to walls, and there’s also a long and fine tradition of Islamic wall tiling.

Georges Jules Victor Clairin (1843–1919), An Ouled-Naïl Tribal Dancer (1895), further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Georges Jules Victor Clairin’s portrait of An Ouled-Naïl Tribal Dancer from 1895 takes us briefly outdoors to see these beautiful botanical designs.