Painted, a tile with a design painted upon the bisque and then glazed, or a tile with the painting upon the glaze itself. In the first case called underglaze, and in the last overglaze work.
Printed, a tile with a design printed on the bisque and then glazed.
The oldest tile makers that we have any historical knowledge of were unquestionably the Egyptians, who not only made tiles to decorate their buildings with, but also for inlaying wood and bronze objects; however, as with us, their greater use was in architecture, in cases beauty of decoration was required.
This latter application of tiles, with the Egyptians, commenced at a very early period in their history. The inner doorway
In the brick temple of Ramses III., built 1228 years before the Christian era, tiles were used in great numbers on the walls and floors, around the doorways, and upon the outer walls.
Some of the tiles were in relief, the body or background in blue or yellow bisque, with figures modeled upon it in colored pastes, the garments on the figures of the men in various flat colors, the faces, limbs and hair glazed in appropriate tints (Figs. 196, 196 A, 196 B). The Egyptians, in common with Assyrians, used round inlaid vitrified tiles of white on blue, or the reverse, for the ornamentation of walls (Fig. 197), sometimes massed together, but oftener as string courses and for giving a riveted effect to their walls. Like the Assyrians, but not so generally, they wrote upon tile tablets, not by incising the characters upon an unglazed tile, but like the modern Chinese school-boy writes them with black ink. That the Jews used tiles for the same purpose we know from the words of the prophet Ezekiel iv. I : The Babylonians and Assyrians carried the art of tile making and their application both for practical and artistic purposes, to a much higher point than the Egyptians, and in fact than any other of the ancient nations.
Their glazes are brighter and finer, their range of color greater, and their forms more numerous. One of their most novel forms was a cone-shaped tile, three and a half inches long, of a yellow body, having its base dipped in color and its apex running to a sharp point (Fig. 198). These tiles were not only fixed to flat walls, but also to curved surfaces, the apex being imbedded in cement, the colored base turned outward and arranged in patterns of various designs (Fig. 199).
The tiles of Chaldea were in part bas-relief, obtained by pil ing on the color or enamel, while on the other hand the Assyr ian tiles were flat, with the single exception of their round tiles, which were used in vast numbers about doorways and the upper parts of walls, the central boss being in low relief (Fig. 20o).
In Assyria, pictures and geometric designs of large size were executed upon the walls of temples and palaces by uniting tiles, on each of which a portion of the general pattern was made (Fig. 201). The ceiling' tiles were of diverse forms—round, square, square with concave edges—but in all cases having a round hole in the center, through which a pin or boss of metal or ivory could be passed to hold them securely in their place (Fig. 202).
The prevailing colors in the glaze tiles were blue, red, a deep yellow, white, green, black, gold and silver, while the unglazed or floor tiles were but of two colors, a dark red and a yellowish white.
The extreme gorgeousness of the tile-incrusted buildings of Assyria, as they flashed forth their beauty under a brilliant oriental sun, is hard to picture to our minds, accustomed as we are to the colorless architecture of the present day. Is there not a lesson to be learned here? Should we not be more bold in our use of color, not only for interior but also for exterior decoration? No doubt color will be used more freely among us when our architects are properly educated, when they be come not only good consttuctors but have also a knowledge of artistic proportion, harmony of design, and the decorative principle governing the use of materials in their relations of color and texture to the whole structure and to one another.