F is for Faience: A-Z of Historic Buildings

Faience refers to ceramics—fired clay—which have been coated with a glaze. Faience has been used in architecture in various ways, often with theatrical effect. Glazes are composed of sand (which becomes the glass), a ‘flux’ which lowers the melting point of sand, and metal oxides which provide colour. Glazes are crucial for making faience faience: the glossy finish of the material resists pollution, rain, and fire. Because the metal oxides suspended in the glass are usually very stable, their colours are remarkably permanent. 
Without a stable pigment suspended in glass, the other way of adding colour to a building is by painting it. The use of colour on the exterior of buildings through paint is relatively rare, however. Sometimes, pigments are added to limewash to make a monochrome coating, called ‘colourwash’. In the British Isles, ‘Polychromy’ i.e. multi-coloured decoration applied with paint, was at its height in the medieval period. Vanishingly little of this has survived, however, and colour normally has to be recovered through scientific examination of samples taken from nooks and crannies of architectural carvings.

The second half of the 19th century saw a new burst of colour in architecture. The writing of John Ruskin in his Stones of Venice, specifically his Nature of Gothic essay, persuaded a generation of architects that variety, texture and colour were all fundamental to architecture and gave it ‘soul’. Buildings of the later Victorian period have great fun with what’s called ‘constructional polychromy’. The natural colour of building materials is exploited to create a dazzling array of reds, blacks, whites and blues.

Constructional polychromy at All Saints, Margaret Street, William Butterfield, designed 1849

One could go further than brick and stone, however, and introduce an almost unlimited range of colour by deploying faience. This is what happened towards the end of the 19th century. It coincided with perhaps the most eclectic phase in English architecture, where Renaissance, Gothic, and eventually Art Nouveau styles collided with the latest building technology. 

One of the best examples of the use of faience is the work of George Skipper, a Norfolk-based architect. Perhaps his magnum opus, the Royal Arcade in Norwich shows the full possibilities of glazed ceramic tiles, with saturated blues, reds and greens covering elegantly decorated surfaces. There are hints of English Baroque, Gothic, and Italian Renaissance all interacting with the whiplash curves and vegetal motifs of Art Nouveau. Because of faience, the colours are as intense as they were in 1899 when the building was completed. 

Red, white, orange, green, blue: the possibilities of faience as exploited by George Skipper in the Royal Arcade, Norwich, 1899. Photograph by Kate Nicol CC-by-SA

One cannot discuss the topic of faience without a mention of Leslie Green, architect of several of London’s underground stations. London tube stations are an iconic use-case of the glazed tile, not just internally but also on many of the facades—those designed by Green, that is. Green used a more restrained, basically English Baroque style with some Nouveau inflections. However, the buildings are clad in ‘ox-blood’ glazed tiles, a strikingly intense, deep red which makes them an unforgettable sight.

Leslie Green in blood red: Russell Square underground station. Photograph by Martin Bodman CC-by-SA