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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
Early examples of the use of tiles for mortuary purposes are numerous and interesting. Eed tiles of this nature, inlaid with black clay, have been found in Devonshire, Somersetshire and Surrey, England.* It is known that inlaid tiles were used to mark the site of graves in Worcestershire far into the seventeenth century. In Malvern Priory church, which contains some of the finest examples of heraldic tablets, Richard Corbet, a knight templar, who died in the thirteenth century, has a plain table monument, the sides and ends of which are covered with tiles, 51- inches square and 1|- inches thick, decorated with the arms of the Corbet family, f
In the same ancient church, there were examples of monograms, the letters impressed in the clay and then filled in with white earth, and of pious inscriptions in black-letter in connection with fhem. Inscriptions formed with small tiles, each bearing a separate letter, have been found there, and the grave of Vicar Edmund Rea, 1640, was marked by a border of such tiles, chronicling his death.
In the pottery districts of Staffordshire, earthenware slabs or gravestones were not uncommon. Several examples, with drawings, of specimens in the Mayer collection are cited in Meteyarcl’s Life of Wedgwood. One is a tablet one foot high, nine inches broad, and two inches thick; another, two feet three inches high, one foot seven inches broad, and three- fourths of an inch thick. One is formed of seggar clay, and the other of dark red clay, and both are inscribed, one with raised white letters, and the other with the letters sunk, and covered with a glaze. All of the inscriptions are remarkably clear.
Building-Tablets.
Another example of the use of tiles is found in the building-tablets set into the front walls of houses to show the date of construction, and the name of the builder or owner. The custom was an old one, and was very generally followed in the pottery region. Some of these were made of light brown clay, with the ornaments in relief in yellow clay. Others are glazed white, with the date and armorial bearings painted in
* Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Meteyard, I., 55. t Antiquarian and Architectural Year Book, 1844, p. 147.