s Pair of tiles by Minton, Hollins & Co., Stoke on Trent, 1871 - Hull Museums Collections

Pair of tiles by Minton, Hollins & Co., Stoke on Trent, 1871

These tiles are part of the first range of tiles with Turkish-style decoration made in England.

People travelling to Turkey in the mid-1800s collected beautifully patterned objects like vases and carpets. Some British museums also admired and displayed these kinds of objects. Many designers saw these objects in museums and used the styles and colours in their own work.

These tiles have a symmetrical design of flowers in a vase. The style and colours were inspired by pottery designs made at Isnik (now Nicaea) in Turkey in the 1500s. The flowers are carnations and tulips, traditional Turkish flowers.

Colin Minton Campbell, one of the owners of Minton Hollins & Co, bought some Isnik tiles from Paris in 1858. He bought more Turkish tiles from Constantinople (now Istanbul) around the same time. He took them back to his factory, where they eventually influenced the factory’s tile designs.

The motif of flowers in a vase is found in decorative designs produced in many countries west of India. It occurs frequently in Islamic tiles from countries like Turkey, and on Dutch and English blue and white pottery.

Minton, Hollins & Company began making tiles like these in 1871. Other factories had made individual tiles influenced by Turkish designs before this. However, Minton Hollins was the first to produce a whole range of Turkish-inspired tiles. After this, more tile makers began making tiles loosely based on designs from Turkey or Persia (modern day Iran).

The decoration on these tiles has been made by printing a black outline of the design. The outline has been filled in with blue, green, turquoise and orange paints and covered with a clear glaze.