The art of faience tile making originated in Arabic North Africa and moved slowly northward through Spain and Italy - mainly the city of Faenza, hence the French “faïence” - to Antwerp and the Netherlands, eventually reaching the northern Dutch province of Friesland in 1570.

The designs in this book come from the archives of the Royal Tichelaar Makkum ceramic factory. Royal Tichelaar Makkum was founded in 1572 and is the oldest continuously operating factory in the Netherlands - and one of the oldest in the world. The factory's archive contains countless designs and actual tiles made in the factory's 400+ years in operation. For the first time in this book, a selection of these designs has been made available to the public.

Agile Rabbit Editions contain stunning images for use as a graphic resource, or inspiration. All the illustrations are stored in high-resolution format on the enclosed free CD-ROM and are ready to use for professional quality printed media and web page design. The pictures can also be used to produce postcards, or to decorate your letters, flyers, etc. They can be imported directly from the CD into most design, image-manipulation, illustration, word-processing and e-mail programs; no installation is required. For most applications, single images can be used free of charge. Please consult our section on image rights for conditions.

more books in tile designs