Medieval tiles, Cleeve Abbey

It isn't unusual to come across medieval tiles in cathedrals and monastic buildings, and it's very common to find Victorian tiles influenced by their designs. However, the number of such tiles is often quite low, which isn't the case at Cleeve Abbey in Somerset. Here there are thousands with a variety of heraldic designs all dating from the 1200s. They show similarities to tiles in Salisbury Cathedral Chapter House and Clarendon Palace. Cleeve's tiles are well-protected and displayed by English Heritage.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Self-portrait with iPhone

When I first began photoblogging with my PhotoReflect site, all the way back in December 2005, one of my first photographs involved a self-portrait with my face distorted in the curved top of a cafetiere. In the ensuing years I regularly offered self-portraits that revealed relatively little. It's something I haven't really continued in PhotoEclectica, this shot being the only such example. So, by way of correction, here is what I hope is the first of many inventive "self-portraits". It was taken in a local coffee shop.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Tiled pub facade

What is now the Eagle Vaults pub in Worcester was built as a private house around 1740. It was bought in 1764 and in 1779 was converted into a pub known as Young's Mug House. From 1814-1817 it was known as the Volunteer pub and subsequently the Plummer's (sic) Arms. In 1859 it became The Friar Street Vaults. Some time around 1890-1900 it had the decorative and lettering tiles applied to the ground floor of the facade and its name at that time (as now) was the Eagle Vaults. The tiles have lasted very well and the whole scheme looks almost as good today as when it was first installed over a century ago.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Old pub advertisement

The Queen's Arms at Newhall Street, Birmingham, is a pub designed by the architect, Joseph D. Ward, who worked for the brewers, Mitchells & Butler. It dates from c.1870 and has been extensively modernised twice, the first occasion being in 1901 and the second in the late C20. The tiled advertisement on the corner of the pub must date from the 1901 remodelling and has suvived remarkably intact. It employs a cassical egg and dart border (awkwardly broken by the name at the top, a cartouche with gold medal awards from the C19 and a style of lettering frequently seen at the turn of the century.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

The Tailor of Taste

The men's clothing retailer, Burton, began life in 1903 when it was established by Montague Burton in Chesterfield. By 1929 it had over 400 stores as well as factories and mills, and was a FTSE 100 company. Today it is a brand name subsumed under the banner of the Arcadia group. The tiled sign that was part of the advertising wrapped around the store in Abergavenny may well date from those heady days in the late 1920s when the company was a familiar high street presence. The lettering is an interesting mix of the flamboyant and the spare and the sign itself was made to last - which it has done, remarkably well.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Eagle Vaults pub ornament

Britain's Victorian public houses come in many shapes and sizes. As far as decorative embellishments go they range from the sparse to the exuberant. The Eagle Vaults pub in Worcester falls into the latter category. The ground floor is faced with reddish-brown high gloss tiles with areas displaying iridescent highlights. The inspiration is classical architecture but overlaid with hints of Art Nouveau and music hall fancifulness - what in the 1890s-1900s was described as Mannerist. Tile lettering proclaims its name and the range of drinks on offer. Too often such facades have been modernised, but sufficiently frequently they have been valued for the brightness they bring to the streetscape and remain undisturbed.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Architectural novelty

Novelty shouldn't be one of the main aims in architecture and yet today, perhaps more than at any other time in the history of this practical art, architects seem to be caught in a competition to produce the most unusual and eye-catching design within the budget of their brief. The building in today's photograph was one we passed on a walk through the Battersea district of London. A new Frank Gehry building is in the offing there, and the new United States Embassy that is currently under construction is displaying a most unusual exterior wall. Perhaps the irregular, rectangular tiles in shades of blue with white were the architects' response to the arms race in novelty currently under way in that location.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Old roofs, Stamford, Lincolnshire

There is something pleasing about the aged, worn materials that form these roofs in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Just as there is something attractive about the way they all differ, all cluster together, and collectively make a jumble that the eye finds fascinating. Collyweston stone tiles, slates from Wales and Westmoreland, bricks from locally dug pits and Peterborough, stone from nearby Barnack and elsewhere, and clay chimney pots from who knows where, can all be seen and all make a contribution. The constituent parts of the buildings look timeless but few, if any, date from before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and quite a bit is nineteenth century.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100