Carter & Co - Poole Pottery - Tiles (1907)

These unique Carter & Co -Poole Pottery- 20th Century tiles are handmade, plastic clay, luster ware.
In 2007, David Carlisle, Architectural Antiques Expert, discovered these extremely rare Art Pottery Tiles in the Southampton Sailors' House (59 Oxford Street). The home was commissioned for the Sailors of the merchant navy as accommodation while in port.

Southampton Seamen’s' Home (The Mountbatten House)

The Seamen’s' Home was opened in 1909 to accommodate the Sailors of the merchant navy. 24 of the crew members of the RMS Titanic stayed there the night before they sailed on their fateful journey.
The Southern Daily Echo explained the relationship between the Southampton Seamen’s' Home in an article titled "Titanic sailors' resting place"

This magnificent building was completed in 1909.
On the 10 April 1912, the Titanic left Southampton for its journey to New York with 1470 passengers and cabin crew members onboard. The connection between the Seamen’s House which was subsequently called “The Mountbatten House” was the resting place where passengers and crew members spent their last night on land before tragically hitting the deadly iceberg after four days into their journey.

20 Year after the construction of the Seamen’s House, the owner decided to add another floor to the building. Sadly, during the development of the third floor, all tiles in the rooms and halls at the 1st and 2nd floors were removed and dismantled. However, the ground floor was spared for vague reasons and they painted the walls over the tiles to cover them.

In April 2007, when we arrived in Southampton to inspect the building, the demolition Company had already started working on the building. Only for a coincidence, David hardly noticed a distinctive design on the wall under many layers of paint. As soon as he removed some of the paint in the corner of a wall, he realised that the art-work was of precious beauty and rare style.
On the left of this page there are several photos which were taken while the work on the building for its demolition was started. Although the poor quality of the photos, it can be appreciated the character of the Seamen's Home main hall, the living room, and other rooms on the ground floor. All interior walls in the house were decorated with those unique tiles commissioned by Carter & Co Pole Pottery specifically designed for the Seamen’s House which took 2 years to complete.

Carter & Co - Poole Pottery Manufacturer

Those outstanding tiles made by Carter & Co (Poole Pottery) were on the edge of been lost forever. With very limited time, our team worked hard to make sure that all tiles which could be saved were carefully removed and individually cleaned to give back their true color and uniqueness.
In fact, William De Morgan worked for many years for Carter & Co. After his departure, he started to design its own tiles, which reshaped the way of making tiles luster ware. Previously to his innovation, tiles had flat colors and very plane styles.
At Carter & Co, was used an impressionistic representation and stylized colors to create variant tones of the different sea layers , from the dark blue color at the base of the walls to an extraordinary extravagant  graduation of lighter blue and green tones at the top of the walls. In between of the sea scenery there were four sea symbols " Neptune, Shell fish, Anchor, and Dolphin” spread around all walls.   
Those astonishing tiles have a unique style and beauty. They were handmade using clay which were formed in stamps having a V shaped edged. To glaze the tiles they used to deep each tile in a coating colored paint and left drying to give its unique graduation to create the sea theme.
See below a range of the tiles photos showing their texture and color variations.

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