There are companies who are able to exactly replicate Victorian ceramic tiles. Many of these tiles feature the signatures and dates that would have featured on the original tiles. If you're looking for genuine Victorian tiles it can be very difficult to tell whether or not they are real. This poses a real problem when you want your interior decoration scheme to be authentic and you're paying high amounts for what you believe to be the real article. It can never be a good thing when you install what you believe is a beautiful floor tile feature complete with genuine Victorian tiles, only to be told by an expert or even a visitor that the tiles are in fact reproduction. It means you have not only wasted your money on what you thought were genuine Victorian floor tiles, and you are facing a ton of disappointment to.
History
Victorian tiles were created during the Victorian era when art was combined with mass production. They were created to meet the needs of the ever-increasing demands of the middle class consumers of the time. using patterns by famous designers in mass production first started in England and from the mid 19th century, no house was complete without Victorian tiles.
How They Were Made Originally
The ceramic tiles that were made originally were designed for walls, ceilings and features, not for floors. Three main types of decoration were used - hand-painted, transfers and hand filled. Hand-painted designed were the most costly because they required the most labour to create. You can identify these types of tile by looking for individual brush strokes. Transfers are where designs are printed directly onto a tile, or printed onto a tissue which is then transferred onto the tile. Hand filled wall tiles use a combination of both hand painted and transfer techniques. The outline is transferred onto the tile, then a painter hand paints the rest. Other techniques were used during this time including carving, moulding and squeeze bag methods.
Looking For The Difference
The designs and patterns you will see on reproduction tiles tend to be exact copies of the original designs. So although an awareness of old designs is useful in interior design, it's not particularly useful when it comes to telling the difference between an original and reproduction Victorian tile.
Looking for clues of modern colour printing techniques is a good starting point and provides a wide selection of 'tell-tale' signs for you to look out for. Modern colour printing leaves a highly recognisable rosette pattern which tends to be made up of blue, red, yellow and black dots. These dots are used to make all the other colours on the tile. These dots aren't commonly seen with the naked eye, but can be seen with a 10x strength magnifier.
Another clue is the fact that old Victorian tiles tend to be around half an inch thick, which is thicker than the new tiles which tend to be around a quarter of an inch thick. You can also look at the back of the tiles for clues, as the back of the original tiles tend to have grooves on them which was needed to help them adhere to the less effective 19th century adhesives. New tiles will have smooth backs because the adhesives we have now are much stronger.
Look For Reputable Dealers
As well as keeping an eye out for signs that what you are buying is genuine, it does help to buy from a reputable dealer or retailer who isn't trying to sell you fakes. Try to avoid buying the tiles off the internet, or from non-specialist outlets that may not have experience in the products they are selling.
