Voysey's tile designs

This paper is the first extensive survey of the architect C F A Voysey's activities as a designer of ceramic tiles and includes a catalogue raisonné of all known Voysey designed tiles and the various manufacturers with whom he worked. The compilation of the catalogue raisonné was necessitated by the large number of tiles erroneously attributed to Voysey on purely stylistic grounds by dealers, collectors, and museum curators. Tile attributions to Voysey based on style alone being problematic as his work was very influential and he had many ‘followers’, being much copied during his lifetime. Using primary source material and location visits, the author rigorously catalogues only those tiles that can be proven to have been designed by the architect, establishing a firm chronology and documenting all the manufacturers to whom he supplied designs alongside those with which he had no association. In so doing, many problematic ‘Voysey style’ tiles (some held in prominent, public collections) are removed from Voysey’s canon and, in some cases, reattributed to their actual designer. The paper also explores the reasons for the rise in popularity of ceramic tiling in nineteenth century Britain and contextualises Voysey’s activities in this field alongside those of other influential architect/designers. This is a revised, larger format version of the original paper and catalogue raisonné published in The Orchard (The Journal of the CFA Voysey Society), Vol.8, 2019.