WALL AND FLOOR TILES.
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utmost in the production of the most brilliant colors. Graphic and chromatic decorations in ceramics find in this field their legitimate basis of application and their greatest possible expansion in the future. The great object of the tile is decoration; and the flat surface in the wall or on the floor is more appropriately the basis of ornament than a plate or dish on which, when in use, the decoration is obscured. The antiquity of the art of decorating with tiles is well known, and the perfection which it attained in several countries is shown by the specimens which have been handed down to us unchanged,—not even dimmed by age. The tiles of India, Persia, Arabia, and Spain, the mosaics of the Romans, and the walls of the Alhambra, are familiar examples. Glazed decorated tiles were used in Egypt, and among the Assyrians and Babylonians. They were introduced in Spain by the Saracens and Moors. In China they were employed in remote periods for both exterior and interior decoration. The Exhibition contained specimens of antique tiles from India and from the mosques of Samarcand, of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and thus a retrospective glance of the art and its application in this place is fully justified.
The Indian tiles were brought by Dr. Leitner from Lahore, where they were taken from old monuments ; but the colors are as vivid as they ever were. The art, which was connected with the Mogul architecture, is now almost dead, as it is no longer sustained.
Manufacture of Tiles in Great Britain.
The manufacture in Great Britain dates from mediaeval times, and is supposed to have originated in the Roman mosaics,—the transition from tesserae to the tiles, with impressed designs, being gradual,—the difference in the first place being in the size of the pieces only. Evidences of the gradual modification of the size have been found, and in Spain, small tiles, intermediate between British tiles and tesserae, arc now in use. Recent excavations at Chichester have brought to light mosaic pavements and Roman tiles.
It is highly probable that the convenience and greater rapidity of laying larger tiles led to their adoption, and the