An Imported Renaissance Stove-Tile From Dover in the Collections of the Society of Antiquaries

Abstract

IN a recently-published survey 1 the author has identified a significant trade in ceramic stove-tiles from the Continent to Britain during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Preliminary evidence suggests that these tiles, used in the construction of ceramic stoves, travelled as an important sideline in consignments of Rhenish stoneware and other imported pottery bound for London and the South East. 2 Demand for closed wood-burning stoves for the purpose of interior heating among the aristocracy and urban elite culminated in the limited manufacture in the Surrey-Hampshire border region of stove-tiles bearing the Royal Arms during the reigns of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. 3 Current work is concentrating on the examination of the specific archaeological and social context for stove-tile finds in this country and their precise chronology and attribution. Scientific methods such as Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (I.N. A. A.) are helping to clarify the questions of production source and distribution mechanisms. This tile, 4 discovered amongst the ruins of St Radegund's Abbey, Poulton, outside Dover, in 1776, has produced significant evidence for this continuing research programme. Its re-evaluation has formed an important contribution to the debate on tile-stove popularity and use in Britain and highlighted the problems in examining the source of tiles imported from the Continent.The tile (Society's Museum catalogue 161a) (pi. XLVina) is rectangular in form with a deep flange on the reverse forming an effective heat-retaining cavity. Its dimensions are 278mm by 173mm, with a depth of 45mm. The uniformly green-glazed decorative panel is impressed with a representation of a bearded middle-aged man wearing a chain (of office?) around his neck and carrying a bag of money. He is accompanied by a wolf carrying a goose in its jaw. The portrait is framed by a Renaissance arch on Corinthian pilasters with winged cherub heads set into the spandrels. The figure is supported by the German inscription 60 IAR A BEGAN. Slight breaks under the glaze reveal a thin white earthenware fabric forming the surface of the decorative panel, with the reverse and frame of the tile made from a coarser brick-red-coloured ware. This reinforced 'sandwich' construction is well known on both Continental and English-type armorial stove-tiles of the Renaissance period: 5 the finer whiteware more able to take the impression of the reverse mould and the redware considerably more resistant to continual heating and cooling.The figure represents the Sixty-Year-Old in the cycle of the Ten Ages of Man, which was one of the means of dividing the span of life and a frequent set of images in late medieval and Renaissance iconography. 6 Of all the possible sources, this version is most reminiscent of the corresponding portrait in the woodcut series by Jost Amman (1538-91), which was reproduced for a calendar printed by Georg Leupold Fuhrmann of Nuremberg in 1614. 7 The composition of the figures, thenattributes and the precise form of the accomp...