Medieval; Fourteenth Century English Floor Tiles; Penn, Buckinghamshire.

Medieval; Fourteenth Century English Floor Tile; Penn, Buckinghamshire.

This beast passant above squared quatrefoils with its heraldic sensibilities, is a design we can attribute with some certainty, thanks to Elizabeth Eames, to the Penn tile makers of Buckinghamshire.

By the mid fourteenth century the Penn tilers had devised a more efficient way of producing encaustic tiles; the method later termed as ‘printed’ tiles, introduced dipping the stamp or die into a white slip, then pressing into the tile, thus leaving a printed decoration.

Consequently, the Penn tile industry went on to be hugely successful, claiming commissions for large spreads of tiles from Oxford across to London.