Posts Tagged ‘tile’

On the Tiles!

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

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vintage Kenneth Townsend hedgehog tile

This is our 100th post – and we’re turning to one of our favourites – artist & illustrator, Kenneth Townsend. In particular we’re focusing on his ‘Menagerie‘ series of tiles. These tiles received a Design Centre award.

mosaic of vintage Kenneth Townsend tiles from the 'Menagerie' series

The ‘Menagerie’ series featured over 20 different animal designs. He also produced the ‘Horoscope’ and ‘London’ tile series.

vintage Kenneth Townsend designed ceramic tile of Coldstream guardsmen

A new Flickr Group celebrating the works of Kenneth Townsend has just been formed. You’re welcome to join and add your own images or just come and have a look!

vintage Kenneth Townsend designed tile of a cat from the Menagerie series

If you’re interested in starting your own collection, they’re often available in vintage stores. They also come up for sale on eBay quite regularly.  Have a look at seller simoncurtis. He’s had quite a few of these tiles for sale recently – and has kindly allowed us to use some of his photos in this blog post.

Tile-tastic!

Monday, May 18th, 2009

We were out & about in Huddersfield the other day and took some photos of these amazing tiled mosaics.

They’re situated in a 1960s-built precinct development in the town centre- they really capture the era.

On the subject of tiles, we recently put this image on Flickr. It’s a 1960s tile by Platt depicting a prince on horseback with a hunting falcon – we absolutely love it! We’re planning on having it framed.

We got this vintage bird tile ready-framed which is very effective. We think it was made by Maw & Co. It reminds us of Lisa Larson in style. We bought it from Wowie Zowie in Chorlton. This shop is well worth a visit if you’re in Manchester – they have some lovely stuff, imaginatively displayed.

This large tile/plaque is indeed by Lisa Larson – she’s a real favourite of ours! It was designed for Gustavsberg of Sweden in the 1960s.

Here it is in its usual home on a shelf in our lounge.

Here’s another one of our vintage tiles in situ – this one’s Italian – it sits happily on our bathroom shelf. Here it is in close up.

The most recent addition to our little collection was picked up yesterday. It’s quite different to the others in the fact that it represents a real place – it depicts the Euromast in Rotterdam designed in the 1950s – we really like the modernist feel to it.

The final item in our burgeoning tile collection is by Kenneth Townsend. We featured it before in our Z is for… Zoo blog post.

The lion is an early piece from his Menagerie range. Hopefully we’ll be able to find some of his other animals to fill our shelves!

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