Pilkington's Royal Lancastrian galleon tile designed by Charles Voysey, £320 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
An avid member and secretary of TACS (Tile & Architectural Ceramic Society), he bought tiles from three centuries of production to create a timeline though the subject from the 18th century to contemporary studio work.
His daughter Stella recalls an enthusiasm that frequently permeated family life. “Tiles were a constant fixture in my childhood. Frequent day trips to churches, tiled pubs and occasionally public toilets or dad shouting 'won't be long!', as he ducked into an antiques shop or fair. Back at home, there was always a slight air of secrecy about his collecting. Parcels through the door were swiftly squirreled away.
“It was only after dad died in 2022 that we got a real sense of the size and significance of his collection. Looking through his meticulously-kept catalogues, it was clear that this had been a lifelong labour of love and the product over 40 years of research and dedication.”
The Roger Hensman Tile Collection – From Delft to De Morgan was the largest of several significant tile collections Fieldings in Stourbridge has sold in recent years. Comprising something between 8000 and 10,000 tiles, it was more than twice the quantity of the landmark sale of the late Sheila Hughes that the auction house sold in 2008. Under instructions from the family, the whole collection was sold without reserve on June 26, guaranteeing that all 859 lots would be sold in a single day.
A well-attended if marathon sale – commencing at 9.30am and completed precisely 12 hours later at 9.30pm – it totalled £117,910 including buyer’s premium.
Four 18th century Liverpool delft tiles attributed to Sadler & Green with neoclassical transfer decoration after engravings by JS Miller, £750 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
The earliest tiles in the sale were English and Dutch tinglazed earthenware examples. Alongside numerous blue and white pictorial tiles were a group of four Liverpool delft tiles attributed to the Sadler & Green factory printed and painted in green with neoclassical transfer designs. Most of these were taken from engravings by JS Miller after William Sandby’s made for the opera Horace in 1749. The four examples of different sizes and treatments sold at £750.
A lot of two English polychrome delft tiles offered a Liverpool example decorated with a vase of flowers in the Fazackerly palette of blue, green, manganese, yellow, and orange and another from Bristol decorated with a bird of prey within a bianco-sopra-bianco border of flowers and leaves. Both dated to around 1760, they took £400.
The vast proportion of any collection of British tiles will focus on 6in (15cm) dust-pressed tiles from the Victorian era.
A group of six Minton Hollins & Co Aesthetic movement tiles from a set c.1875 depicting Aesop's Fables. The lot sold for £850 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
The top lot in the sale was a group of group of six Minton Hollins & Co Aesthetic movement tiles from a set c.1875 depicting Aesop's Fables. The designs, that are hand painted rather than printed in brown, grey and pink enamels over a cream glaze, are among a small number created for Minton by Clement Heaton who is best known for his Arts and Crafts work in stained glass and enamelling.
These six depict the fables of The Frog and the Ox, The Hare and the Tortoise, The Frogs Who Wished for a King, The Fox and the Stork, The Cat and the Old Rat, and The Quack Toad. However, the full series runs to 24 tiles. A set of 13 sold for £4800 at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh in 2019 so these were not expensive at £850.
Minton encaustic tile c. 1840, decorated with a knight in horseback based on a medieval original from Temple Church, London, £750 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
One of Minton & Co.'s first major commissions as a tile maker was the restoration of the Temple Church in 1840-42. Some of the designs were copied from the medieval encaustic tiles in the Temple Church itself, some based on recently rediscovered tiles at the Westminster Abbey Chapter House and others exercises in historicism. Those that occasionally come to market were removed from the Temple Church after bomb damage during the Second World War. The example here, decorated with a knight in horseback based on a medieval original from Temple Church, took the highest price for a single tile in the sale at £750.
Among the rarer designs by William de Morgan was a single tile decorated with a design created by William Morris for the bathrooms at Membland Hall, Plymouth. Banker Edward Charles Baring (1829-1897) bought the house in 1877 and employed the architect George Davey (1820-1886) to re-model the house and add wings and outbuildings.
William De Morgan dust pressed tile decorated with a design by William Morris from Membland Hall, Plymouth 1877, £600 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
Sometime between 1916 when the property was sold and in 1928 when it was demolished, tiles sufficient for six panels were found in a cupboard and had apparently never been mounted. They are among the earliest De Morgan tiles, decorated in Chelsea using dust-pressed blanks supplied by the Architectural Pottery Company, Poole. Full sets can be seen in several public collections (there is one on display in the William Morris Gallery, but this single tile took £600.
Two tiles from the Carter's Poole Pottery Tea Room with designs by Edward Bawden, £420 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
Tiles from the Poole Pottery included two from the series created for the visitor’s tea rooms in the early 1920s. Edward Bawden provided the Deco-influenced designs depicting life in a ceramics factory that were painted in black and emerald green enamels by Phyllis Butler and Emily Dinsdale. The full history of the commission was told via an exhibition titled Poole Pottery Tea Room Tiles by Carter & Co held at the Richard Dennis Gallery in 2002. The pair of tiles from the Hensman collection, picturing factory buildings with smoking chimneys and a man loading a furnace were sold together for £420.
The majority of lots were sold to buyers in the UK although a substantial number went to the Far East, the Netherlands and the United States.
Dust pressed tile attributed to John Meir & Son of Tunstall with a design of anthropomorphic marching cats in the manner of Louis Wain, £500 at Fieldings sale of the Roger Hensman collection.
