Historically, the use of ceramic floor tiles goes back to the
fourth millennium B.C. in the Near and Far East. The Romans
introduced tile-making in Western Europe as they occupied territories.
However, that art was eventually forgotten in Europe for centuries
until the 12th century when Cistercian monks developed a method
of making encaustic floor tiles with inlaid patterns for cathedral
and church floors. But, this skill was again lost in the 16th
century following the Reformation. Except for finely decorated
wall tiles made in Turkey and the Middle East, and Delft tiles
made in Holland in the 17th century, ceramic floor tiles were
not made again in Europe until almost the mid-19th century.
The modern tile industry was advanced by Herbert Minton in 1843
when he revived the lost art of encaustic tile-making in England.
The industry was further revolutionized in the 1840s by the "dust-pressing"
method which consisted of compressing nearly dry clay between
two metal dies. Dust-pressing replaced tile-making by hand with
wet clay, and facilitated mechanization of the tile-making industry.
In the 19th century, Minton tiles were sold from this catalogue to American clients. Photo: NPS files. |
Throughout the rest of the 19th century, dust-pressing enabled
faster and cheaper production of better quality floor tiles in
a greater range of colors and designs. In the 1850s encaustic
tiles were selected for such important structures as the new Palace
at Westminster in London, and Queen Victoria's Royal Residence
on the Isle of Wight. By the latter part of the 19th century,
despite the fact that encaustic tiles were still quite expensive,
they had become a common flooring material in many kinds of buildings.
Development of the Tile Industry in America. Although
plain, undecorated ceramic tiles were traditionally a common flooring
material in many parts of the Americas, especially in Latin and
South America, ceramic floor and roof tiles were probably not
made in the North American Colonies until the late-16th or early-17th
century. It was, however, in the Victorian era that ceramic tile
flooring first became so prevalent in the United States. The
production of decorative tiles in America began about 1870 and
flourished until about 1930.
Like so many architectural fashions of the day, the popularity
of ceramic tile floors in America was greatly influenced by the
noted architect and critic, Andrew Jackson Downing. In his book
The Architecture of Country Houses, published in 1850,
Downing recommended encaustic floor tiles for residential use
because of their practicality, especially in vestibules and entrance
halls.
The 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, with its European
and even a few American exhibits of decorative floor tile, was
a major factor in popularizing ceramic tile floors in the U.S.
Initially, most ceramic tiles-other than purely utilitarian floor
tiles-were imported from England, and their relatively high cost
meant that only wealthy Americans could afford them. However,
when English tile companies realized the potential for profitable
export, they soon established agents in major U.S. cities to handle
their American business. The English near monopoly actually
stimulated the growth of the U.S. tile industry in the 1870s resulting
in sharply decreased English imports by 1890.
"Preserving Historic Ceramic Tile Floors" an Historic Preservation Brief
