Lovely, elegant and comprehensive

Art Nouveau is my period. It was the last time that form mattered over function, before mass production took over from artistic exuberance. My own collection ran to several hundred objects.

Tiles and Styles is an extremely well organized colorful compendium focused on tiles – wall, floor, stove and furniture, as well as ceramic trays. Forster has chosen a lovely selection in full color, and displayed them in his pages differently and pleasantly, some big, some small, interrupting the text and making for a variety of layouts. The book is a pleasure and a comprehensive reference. He has chapters on the styles, which were dramatically different in every country, biographies of the artists, and examinations of the very different production techniques employed by the very large number of factories making tiles. He describes (but does not show) their makers’ marks on the backs of tiles.

There are a couple of issues with the book. I am disappointed there are no examples of the fantastic designs of the Glasgow School he describes, though I understand his focus is continental. The difference is so dramatic it would have been worth cheating a little. And I can’t imagine why he would repeat photos of tiles when there are so many thousands to choose from. There are probably a dozen photos he has used at least twice.

My heartfelt thanks to Ken Forster; I am grateful Tiles and Styles was not around when I was collecting tiles and trays, discovering all this for myself. It would most certainly have freed me to obsessive buying of these stunningly bright, dramatic and still avant-garde pieces.

David Wineberg ( )