Cardiff: A celebration of tiles

My last two posts have been about the beautiful entrances to some of Cardiff’s magnificent old houses: ‘Welcoming Doors’ focused on the doors and the overall appearance of the doorways, and ‘Up the Garden Path’ looked more closely at the often intricately patterned tile paths leading up to the house entrances. Before I leave this subject, I want to delight your eyes with a look at some of the stunning tiles that decorate the house porches.

Unless the houses have been poorly maintained, which, sadly, is the case in many of Cardiff’s inner-city streets, or an ignorant owner has removed or, worse, painted them over, these gorgeous tiles can still be found throughout the city’s older suburbs.

The designs vary tremendously. Some feature a single pattern running the full height of the porch, others cover the full height but have a different pattern top and bottom. In some porches, the tiles have only been laid on the lower half, with the top halves painted or bricked.

In some streets, every house has the same design and the same colour-way, in others they have the same design but display variations in tile colours. And the designs themselves vary enormously, from simple geometric patterns to elaborate floral displays.

These tiles were perhaps an attempt by early 20th-century architects to brighten up what are otherwise quite monotonous rows of bland and featureless houses. And they provide a glowing testament to the skills of contemporary tile designers and makers. Feast your eyes on these beauties!

Remember, you can click on the photos to see them full screen.

There are similarities from one house to the next. The tiles on the right line the entrance to the house where I'm renting a flat.

The fan design is a popular one, and can be seen in many colour variations.

Variations in colour-ways at left and right, and the same flowers at the top in the centre photo.

At right, I've enlarged the image to show the detail in the tiles.

At right and left, the same tiles are used in the bottom panels but with different tiles in the top panels.

Houses in the same street, featuring the same designs.

Cardiff: Up the garden path

In my last post Cardiff: Welcoming doors praising the beautiful entranceways of many of Cardiff’s old Edwardian and Victorian houses, I touched on the pavements or garden paths leading up to the front doors of these houses but only included one photograph. As their designs are so lovely, I thought I would share more images of these colourful geometric beauties.

Many of these tiles and designs originated from the factory of J. C. Edwards & Co of Ruabon, a town in North Wales famous for its clay and terracotta ware. Tessellated designs like these were a favourite of the Romans and, as well as the large pictorial mosaics the Romans are renowned for, their villas and palaces also contained corridors of more basic, geometric tessellated tiling. I can’t help but wonder if J. C. Edwards and his design team were influenced by such ancient buildings.

Of course, J. C. Edwards wasn’t the only tile designer and manufacturer working in the Victorian era, and Cardiff had its own highly esteemed companies making similar porch, floor and pavement tiles. One such was Gibbons, Hinton & Co of Brierley Hill, whose beautiful designs can be seen in many of Cardiff’s older suburbs, particularly in Maindy, north of Bute Park.

Even these curving black-and-white designs are works of art

Many of the garden path designs imitate the designs used for the flooring inside the magnificent old Victorian and Edwardian houses. Unfortunately, I can’t investigate those quite as easily as I can photograph people’s pathways but if you are interested in the interior tiles, or you have tiling that needs maintenance and restoration, the Building Conservation website has an excellent article about geometric and encaustic tiles.  

These paths have the same basic inner square pattern but the outer design has been adapted to fit the location

The designs of these beautiful pavements are highly adaptable and could easily be used as the template for a quilt, a tapestry or a rug. So, in order to share my images with fellow crafters and designers, I have uploaded them to a board on Pinterest, and I will continue to update that board as I find and photograph more of them. I would love to see what talented craftspeople are able to create using these timeless designs so please do contact me if you are inspired to produce something wonderful of your own.

Two different lengths of the same design

Cardiff: Welcoming doors

One of the loveliest aspects of Cardiff’s old Victorian and Edwardian houses is their entranceways.

The doors are frequently painted in vibrant reds, blues and greens, and they often have unusual-shaped windows inset into their upper sections, some of which are filled with plain glass, others with prettily patterned stained glass designs. It is also common to see panels of decorated tiles on either side of the doors, often with Art Deco-style patterns fired into them. Many doors feature rectangular or arched windows above and at the sides, to allow light to filter into the hallway beyond, and some of the older entranceways still retain the charming wrought-iron and glass porches that help protect those entering and exiting the house from inclement weather.

Where they have survived the ravages of time and foot traffic, some of the pavements leading up to the doorways are tiled in colourful geometric designs. Many of these tiles and designs were from the factory of J. C. Edwards & Co of Ruabon, a town in North Wales famous for its clay and terracotta ware, and you can see a page of tessellated and encaustic tile designs from an Edwards catalogue to the right here. Ruabon’s clay manufacturing was so well esteemed that the town was, at one time, affectionately known as ‘Terracottapolis’. (There will be more on J. C. Edwards and his terracotta products in a future blog.)

Sadly, not every entranceway looks as lovely as those shown here. Some house-owners have removed the lovely old doors and replaced them with double-glazed plastic monstrosities, practical perhaps but often exceedingly ugly. Wrought-iron porches have crumbled and been dismantled, tile panels have been painted over, and pavements have been replaced with dreary grey paving slabs.

This blog is intended as a pictorial celebration of how beautiful these architectural features can be, and a shout out to all those wonderful home-owners who value and care for these historic treasures.