Antique Victorian Floor Tiles
Victorian Floor Tiles traversed mosaic and geometric motifs through to floral designs. These days, trusted brands in tiles from Dupont to Armstrong and Dal Tile make period tile designs available to restored turn of the century houses and contemporary residences.
Blue and white were a classic color combination for Victorian Floor Tiles as a result of new technology in printing, which also made transfer prints trendy. Another would be rich earth tones like orange and red, the colors of decorative ceramics known as majolica that were popular in those days. Classic Victorian tiles were tessellated, or similar to jigsaw puzzle pieces, made to connect together systematically without voids or overlaps. Geometric and mosaic schemes were the most dominant tessellations, such as triangles, hexagons and octagons. Reproduction Victorian tiles have less abstract tessellations, like birds and flowers, following the works of graphic artist M. C. Escher.
Victorian English and Somerset residences had confined entryways and entrance halls but they were top priority for flaunting dramatic lighting, tiled floors, heavy curtains and furniture plus door knobs and made of bronze, cast iron or brass. Victorian age covers the monarchy of Queen Victoria from 1830 to 1901 in Great Britain and Ireland. It was characterized by suppressive righteousness, but at the same time, ushered in the revival of gothic architecture as a reaction against the restrained beauty emphasized by neoclassical Georgian times. Medieval churches exhibited a lot of geometric patterns, later retained in the celebration of individuality, unabashed at times, by Romanticism and made evident in design including VVictorian Floor Tiles. Mosaic and geometric patterns continued on under the Edwardian era but art nouveau also moved away from them and onto figures inspired by nature.
