TILE (AS. tigol, tigcle, from Lat. trguhr, tile, from to cover). Properly a piece of ma terial for covering a roof, but limited to harder materials than wood. Slate, marble and other hard stones which can be cut into thin slabs and resist ordinary breakage have been used for tiles. Ordinary roof tiles are of earthenware and these may be perfectly flat and used to shed the water by being laid over One another on a sloping surface, exactly as shingles are laid. The other kind of roof tile is that which is made with ridges by the use of two kinds of tile. those which are flat and those which are curved and laid with the convex side uppermost to cover the joints between the flat ones. There is also a kind of tile which has the flat and the raised ridge-like convexity cast o• molded in the same piece of ceramic ware. From the use of the term to cover many different kinds of roofing it has come to have two different meanings. First, any flat slab, if small and forming one of many pieces used to cover a large surface, is a tile; second, the different ceramic wares used in building and in all kinds of engineering work, drainage, and the like are called tiles.
The decorative value of tile is seen chiefly in flooring. The tile floors of the Middle Ages were composed of earthenware tiles, each of which is complete and of one color, or incised with a pat tern in such a way that a different-colored clay may be inlaid. In the south of Europe wall tiles were much used according to a fashion always prevalent in the East, and were taken up by the Moslem peoples. These tiles in Cairo, Damascus, and other Levantine cities are of such beauty that squares composed of nine or sixteen are often sold for many hundreds of dollars; and even these are admittedly inferior to the tiles of the Persian mosques. In Spain a
modification of this tendency showed itself in the production of tiles of slight relief in the outlines of decorative scrolls and the like, so that the brilliant color with which these scrolls were painted is incrusted, as it were, between slight ridges raised in the clay. These tiles, unfit for floors, are very decorative when used for the linings of walls. The Gothic revival in England between 1840 and 1870 brought with it a strong movement to restore these appliances of decorative buildings; and many tile floors were designed and made in medieval taste. In consequence of this the earthenware tile in dustry became an extensive one in Great Britain and for ninny years the greater number of tiles imported into the United States came from Eng land. Tiles of much greater refinement and beauty were made on the Continent, especially in France. Other tiles have been made with heads, hmnan figures. and even groups in slight relief, the ornamentation being obtained by sculpture rather than color. In very recent times the chief makers of decorative pottery have tried the adormnent of tile with good results. There has grown up among these designers a certain freedom of color composition which no other trade seems to have achieved.
Clay tiles may he divided broadly into solid and hollow, the former being thin and, except for some roofing tiles generally flat, while hollow tiles have a great variety of thickness and shape. In the preparation of the clay for mold ing some one or more of the processes described limier CLAY (paragraph on Clay .11ininy and Working) are employed, varying with the class of clay and the final product. For tile-burning see KILN; TERRA COTTA.