Membland Hall Tile Panel

Large pale leaves curl across a dark ground, passing over tile joints as though the ceramic surface were a continuous sheet. Smaller flowers and slender branches occupy the spaces between them. The Membland Hall panel rewards two kinds of looking: from a distance, its tall, balanced arrangement holds together; close up, the grid reveals how many separate pieces carry that flowing design. The Victoria and Albert Museum’s example contains sixty-six hand-painted, glazed earthenware tiles, designed by William Morris and produced by William De Morgan’s pottery in 1876. ^[1]

The panel belongs to a larger furnishing project for Membland Hall in Devon. A surviving design identifies a bathroom as its intended setting, although the William Morris Gallery reports that six sets were later found in a cupboard and had apparently never been mounted. A design made for a particular house thus survives through a more complicated history of storage, dispersal and museum display. ^[2]

Its making also involved more than one workshop. Morris supplied the design, De Morgan’s pottery undertook its ceramic production, and the Architectural Pottery Company at Poole supplied the blank tiles. Following those distinct contributions makes the object easier to understand. So does following the work of a later maker of a different kind: the conservator who devised a new support so that the V&A’s panel could travel safely. ^[1]

A garden held within a grid

The broad leaves provide the strongest movement in the illustrated panel. Their pointed lobes turn outward and back towards the centre, while reddish-brown stems rise and cross between them. Pale highlights and darker blue-purple shading give the leaves a folded appearance. Yet the composition remains firmly attached to the surface: there is no horizon, distant landscape or single viewpoint into which the plants retreat. The dark intervals make the stems and leaf edges legible, allowing the eye to follow one curve without losing the larger arrangement.

The flowers work at a smaller scale. Round, radiating blossoms punctuate the spaces beside cup-shaped flowers and narrow buds. Thin stems thread between the heavier foliage, creating a second rhythm that becomes clearer on closer inspection. This contrast between broad leaves and fine branching prevents the tall panel from reading as a stack of identical units. Its approximate balance around the centre gives it stability, while the turning tips keep it active.

Tile joints introduce another order. They run horizontally and vertically through leaves, flowers and stems, cutting across the painted growth. A single tile often carries only part of a motif; its neighbour completes the line. The design therefore depends on a relationship between pieces, with the rectangular grid remaining visible beneath a larger botanical structure. The image can be read as vegetation or as an assembly of decorated squares, and each view makes the other more interesting.

Fiona Jordan’s V&A conservation account describes the colours as dark greens, browns, purple and white against a dark ground. Photographs bring their own balance of light and colour, but the contrast between pale foliage and deep background is fundamental to the effect. Jordan also identifies the design as Morris’s only floral tile-panel pattern on this scale. That distinction concerns the design’s exceptional size within his tile work; it does not mean that only one physical panel existed. ^[1]

The William Morris Gallery’s account of the surviving design draws a useful comparison with his contemporary wallpapers. Here the motifs are larger and the spaces between them more open. The broad leaves can be grasped across a room, while the smaller flowers give the surface interest nearby. The Gallery also points to the continuation at the edges, explaining that adjacent panels could carry the pattern sideways. A panel that now looks like a self-contained picture was conceived as part of an extending architectural decoration. ^[3]

The Gallery describes the foliage as Persian in inspiration. This places the plants within a history of ornament as well as a history of botanical observation. Their strong contours, recurring turns and adjustment to a flat field are central to their effect. The Gallery identifies no particular Persian object as a model, leaving the comparison at the level of a decorative tradition. ^[3]

A bathroom design with an uncertain installation history

The surviving paper design, catalogued as A31 at the William Morris Gallery, is dated 1876 and made in pencil, ink and watercolour. The Gallery records an inscription identifying the intended room: “Tiles for bathroom, Membland”. The drawing and the ceramic panels are distinct objects, preserving different stages of the work. One establishes the design and its proposed destination; the others show its translation into glazed earthenware. ^{[2] [3]}

Membland Hall stood near Plymouth. The Gallery connects the commission with the banker Edward Charles Baring, later the first Baron Revelstoke. Its account dates his purchase of the house to 1877 while dating the panel design to 1876. This leaves a question about the sequence of acquisition, design and commissioning. The connection with Baring’s Membland project is established in the museum account, but its precise development remains unclear. ^[2]

The room named on the drawing is firmer evidence than a reconstructed scene of the finished bathroom. According to the Gallery, Membland was sold in 1916; before its demolition in 1928, six sets of the tiles were discovered in a cupboard. They had apparently never been installed. The qualification preserves a consequential uncertainty: a proposed arrangement and a completed tiled room are different things. ^[2]

The distinction also changes the meaning of their survival. These are not straightforward fragments recovered from a documented tiled interior. Their association with a house is secure in the museum accounts, while the intended experience of a continuous scheme has to be inferred from the drawing and the panels’ edges. The floral movement suggests how several panels could work together, but the surviving object cannot tell us precisely how much wall the planned scheme would have covered. ^{[2] [3]}

The design had a commercial life beyond its first destination. The Gallery notes that it still appeared in the Morris firm’s stocklist in 1913 and suggests that it remained available to order. A house-specific origin and a continuing place in the firm’s offerings could coexist. The connection with Membland explains its beginnings, while the stocklist shows how the firm could offer an established design to later clients. ^[2]

Morris, De Morgan and the Poole blanks

Calling this a William Morris tile panel identifies its designer. It does not describe the entire work of manufacture. Jordan’s account names three contributions: Morris’s design, De Morgan’s production, and earthenware blanks made at Poole. The William Morris Gallery gives the supplier’s fuller name as the Architectural Pottery Company. The plain tile was already a manufactured ceramic object before receiving the decoration that makes the panel recognisable. ^{[1] [2]}

The tiles are described as slip-covered, hand-painted and glazed. In the completed panel, the ceramic body carries the surface decoration while the glaze gives that decoration its characteristic finish. The process required a design conceived across many tiles to be realised on separate pieces and then read together. The continuity of a stem over a joint is consequently both a formal decision and a practical achievement. It joins Morris’s arrangement of lines to the workshop’s handling of paint, tile and firing. ^[1]

De Morgan brought a specialised ceramic practice to this work. The V&A’s account of his career traces his connection with Morris to an introduction by Henry Holiday in 1863. His early work for Morris’s firm concerned stained glass, and experiments with the effects of silver paint helped draw him towards ceramic decoration. By the Chelsea period he was decorating bought blanks and employing skilled assistance in kiln work and painting. His pottery was a workplace with distinct tasks, rather than a single artist carrying out every operation. ^[13]

The William Morris Gallery dates the establishment of the Chelsea pottery to 1872 and describes Membland as the largest panel De Morgan had yet attempted. The scale was ambitious for the small premises. Sixty-six tiles had to make one coherent field, and six sets multiplied the practical work behind the apparent ease of the pattern. This was an enlargement of ceramic decoration that depended on an existing specialist workshop. ^[3]

That wider workshop history helps explain the Membland collaboration without assigning an undocumented painter to an individual tile. The V&A names Frank Iles as an important kiln worker and Fred and Charles Passenger among De Morgan’s long-serving painters, but its general account does not establish who painted each part of this particular panel. “Produced by De Morgan’s pottery” preserves both his responsibility and the possibility of workshop labour. “Painted by Morris” would give the reader a different and unsupported account. ^{[1] [13]}

The distinction is also useful when thinking about Morris & Company. A firm could offer a coordinated interior while relying on specialist production beyond its own immediate workshops. De Morgan’s ceramic business had its own development and expertise. The purchased Poole blanks make that network especially tangible: the finished surface brought together a designer, an artist-potter’s workshop and a separate ceramic supplier. The ceramics associated with Morris are best understood through such particular collaborations. ^{[1] [2] [13]}

One design, several surviving panels

The V&A’s panel is numbered C.36-1972. Jordan records its dimensions as 160 × 91.5 centimetres. The William Morris Gallery’s ceramic panel is a separate object, C176, with recorded dimensions of 167.6 × 91.4 centimetres; the Gallery acquired it in 1974 with grant assistance from the V&A. The two institutions preserve examples of the same design, but their measurements and collection histories belong to the individual panels. ^{[1] [2]}

The Gallery’s account also identifies a panel acquired by the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne in 1978, numbered E04941, and one that was with the Fine Art Society in 1972. These references show the dispersal of the Membland group into different collecting contexts. They do not supply a complete, unbroken history for every surviving set, and they do not mean that conservation carried out on the V&A’s example was performed on the others. ^[2]

A further panel belongs to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Its French catalogue calls it Panneau de revêtement mural, a wall-covering panel, and records sixty-six glazed earthenware tiles under accession OAO 1210. It dates the model to about 1876–77 and lists dimensions of 171.4 × 96.8 centimetres, with a thickness of 4.7 centimetres. The broader dating differs slightly from the 1876 date used by the V&A and William Morris Gallery; the exact production sequence remains unresolved. ^[14]

Orsay’s provenance traces its example through the Membland collection, Sotheby’s in London on 19 December 1989, lot 81, and the Société des Amis du Musée d’Orsay, which gave it to the museum that year. Its exhibition record subsequently places it in a tilework exhibition in Lisbon in 2013–14 and the ceramics exhibition Les Flammes in Paris in 2021–22, among other shows. Such later histories extend the objects’ lives beyond the house for which the design was conceived. They also remind us that a familiar photograph of this pattern cannot stand in for every panel’s individual history. ^[14]

When the support became the problem

The unusually detailed evidence for the V&A panel concerns its conservation. Jordan published her account in the museum’s Conservation Journal in October 1999, describing work undertaken before the panel toured Japan in 1997. This is a historical treatment report, with observations tied to that intervention. Its value lies in explaining the relationship between the tiles and their support; it is not a report on their condition today. ^[1]

During the 1970s, the V&A’s tiles had been assembled into four sections inside a wooden frame. Behind them were polyurethane foam, expanded aluminium mesh and wooden attachment blocks. Together these materials made a heavy structure. By 1996, movement between the sections had disturbed some of the grout, allowing neighbouring tiles to come into contact. An assembly intended to hold the design together was introducing a risk of impact damage at its edges. ^[1]

The ceramic tiles were generally in better condition than this mounting system. That reverses an easy assumption about a fragile museum object: the main difficulty was not that every old tile was crumbling. The more recent structure carrying them had become unreliable. Temporary padding reduced movement during handling for the V&A’s 1996 Morris exhibition, but assessment before the Japanese tour found that the existing mount was unsuitable for travel. ^[1]

There were surface issues too. Some older retouching covered extensive areas in an attempt to disguise abrasion and pitting. Previous fillings and colour matching had become dull and discoloured. Although a few tiles had substantial losses, much of the structural damage was limited to small chips at the edges. The proposed treatment therefore combined a new support with cleaning and improvement of existing repairs. It addressed both the safety of the assembly and the legibility of its painted surface. ^[1]

Taking sixty-six pieces apart

Removing the old backing required patient mechanical work. In places the polyurethane had formed a hard, brittle layer; elsewhere the aluminium mesh lay very close to the tile backs. The conservator had to cut and remove the foam gradually before lifting away sections of mesh. Only when enough of a tile’s reverse was accessible could the surrounding grout be separated and the tile released. ^[1]

This stage exposed the difference between making a panel look unified and making it safely separable. From the front, the painting encourages the eye to move across the joints. Behind it, however, each tile must remain an individual ceramic piece. An attachment that binds the parts too aggressively can make later work hazardous, even if it initially produces a convincing continuous surface. The difficulty of taking apart the old mounting gave that concern a practical urgency. ^[1]

Once separated, the tiles were cleaned on their backs and numbered in order. Their older surface repairs were prepared for renewed retouching. Numbering was essential to preserving the painted relationships across the grid: a broad leaf divided between several squares depended on each part returning to the correct place. Conservation of this panel required attention to sixty-six objects and to the single design they formed. ^[1]

Jordan’s criteria for a replacement support brought several demands together. It had to be strong and rigid, light enough for practical handling, stable as it aged and capable of being removed without endangering the tiles. The chosen solution was a board with an aluminium honeycomb core and reinforced outer skins, 26.5 millimetres thick. Its construction provided stiffness without the weight of a comparably solid backing. The hidden support thus became a designed structure in its own right. ^[1]

A mount designed to come apart again

The new arrangement placed all the tiles on one support, with their positions marked before attachment. Fixing was concentrated at the corners, where an isolating layer separated the ceramic surface from the stronger bonding material. Holes through the board aligned with the attachment points, allowing a solvent to reach them in a future treatment. The aim was to make removal possible through a planned route, rather than leave another conservator to struggle through a continuous backing. ^[1]

This is what reversibility meant in the practical circumstances of the treatment. The panel had to be secure enough to hang vertically and to undergo transport, while its attachment remained accessible for later separation. It was a balance between present stability and future access. The choices concerned the whole assembly: adhesive placement, spacing, support, frame and handling all affected the safety of the painted tiles. ^[1]

Grout re-established the intervals between the tiles, and a wooden frame with cushioning in its rebates and battens behind completed the mount. The framed object weighed 69 kilograms, substantially less than before, though still a considerable load. Reduced weight made handling and display easier; the single rigid support addressed the movement that had caused concern between the earlier four sections. ^[1]

Jordan reported that the remounted panel successfully travelled to three exhibition venues in Japan. In 1999 it was in the V&A’s Best of British display, with a later place in the new British Galleries planned. Those details place the treatment within an active exhibition history: this was an architectural decoration being made suitable for movement and repeated public display. ^[1]

Looking again at a stem crossing a tile joint, the visual and structural histories meet. Morris’s design draws attention across the gaps; the mounting must preserve those gaps so that the separate pieces remain safe. The conservation account makes that apparently quiet interval visible as a working part of the object, essential to the survival of its continuous garden. ^[1]