Product Details

Unique one-off hand made tile by Charlotte Salt.

Materials: Black stoneware clay. Decoration with white slip, glaze and oxides.

Size: 9.1 x 9.1 x 1cm (3.6 x 3.6 x 0.4 inches)

THE STORY

Charlotte Salt is a ceramic artist based in North Yorkshire where she works from both her home workshop and the AHH studio collective. A childhood spent exploring her parents' pottery studio means she has been playing and working with clay all her life.

Charlotte works intuitively, using traditional coiling, slab-building, modelling and pinching techniques to create unique works. Everything from the brush strokes on the surface to the physical imprints that intentionally remain, serve as a testament to the making process.

Earlier in the year, The Shop Floor Project commissioned Charlotte to create a collection of tiles inspired by the magnificent Devonshire Hunting Tapestries at the V&A Museum. The tapestries are four very large and beautifully designed tapestries made between 1430 – 1450, depicting hunting scenes of boars, bears, swans, otters, deer and falconry. Very few tapestries of this scale and quality of design have survived and the gallery dedicated to them at the V&A is spectacular.

Charlotte initially visited the tapestries in person at the Museum, filling sketchbooks with possible tile designs. Back in the studio Charlotte spread many reference books across her table, happily getting lost within the details of each tapestry and translating them into designs.

For this first set of tiles, Charlotte has mainly focused on the multitude of animals that animate the tapestries; hunting dogs, bears, deer, otters, swans and owls all feature.  Other highlights include those of castles and portraits with those magnificent headdresses. 

Each tile is hand-made, rolled, cut and, after the first bisque fire, Charlotte draws a pencil outline onto the tiles and then paints bold strokes in oxide glazes.  

Like an alchemist, Charlotte uses her signature mixture of red and buff stoneware, with cobalt oxide and iron chromate, to achieve a collection which has an ancient appearance. They feel as though they have emerged from the same time as the Tapestries that inspired them.