"Must certainly be regarded as a red-letter day in the annals of ceramic literature." - The Connoisseur

"Furnival is to be heartily congratulated upon the all-round excellence of his book. The work should find an honoured place in the library of all clayworkers interested in the progressive advancement of British ceramics." -The British Clayworker

The manufacture of paving-tiles is a natural development of Mosaic work, and indeed, some of the earliest pavements are literally earthenware Mosaics, as at Ely and Westminster. Ceramics expert William James Furnival (1825-1910) in his 900 page book "Leadless decorative tiles, faience, and mosaic" (1904) devoted a 30-page chapter to Mosaic Pavements and Mural Decoration; it is this chapter that has been republished for the reader interested in Mosaics.

Furnival gives many examples of Mosaics in Italy. He then traces its progress in England during Romano-British times; considerable space is given to the illustration of the remains in which this country is so rich: London, Colchester, Bognor, Silchester, Cirencester, Dorchester, Leicester, Bath, Bristol, and York have furnished important examples.

As Furnival notes, "Mosaic assumes so many phases, may be composed of so many different materials, applied as a decorative element in such various ways, is the victim of such incompatible personal predilections, a reviewer inevitably discovers the choice even of a classification far from easy. He may consider it by periods, by uses, by styles, by materials, or by the technique of fixing. Sir Digby Wyatt is said to have treated the subject under seven headings, viz., classical, Latin, Byzantine, Graeco-Italian, Italian monumental, Italian portable, and Florentine at pietra-dura. But the classification that commends itself for our purpose is the one relating to the predominating material: thus, glass mosaic, marble mosaic, ceramic mosaic. Occasionally fragments of pearl, ivory, and precious stone were introduced,, but these partake more of the nature of 'inlaying' and 'cloisonne.'''

Contents:

Definitions

Chaldean cones

Egyptian inlaid work

Grecian

Roman

Glass mosaics

Byzantine

Italian

Venetian

British

St. Paul's Cathedral

Marble mosaic

Grecian Roman

Italian

Safacen

Indian

Modern European

Ceramic mosaic

Roman

Blashfield

Prosser

Minton

Contemporary