On The Tiles: Why Collectors Love These Victorian Beauties

We were on holiday in Tunisia and if we fancied a break from lazing around the pool, the tourist rep said she was arranging a free trip to see some Roman remains. It wasn't much of an trip - in the heat of the day we walked crocodile-style a few hundred yards from the hotel down a dusty road - but the pay-off was a sight that has stuck in our memory.
    The rep was carrying a bucket as we picked our way through the what looked like a building site but it wasn't for donations for the tour guide. After asking us to stand aside, the guide dipped the bucket into a trough of water which he flung across the ground. As it washed away the sand, there revealed to us for the first time was a magnificent marble mosaic floor. A closer look showed that the ornate patterns were made up of tiny square-shaped pieces of coloured stone tiles, called tesserae. It must have taken hours of painstaking work to lay.
    Perhaps that's why we collect tiles like the ones pictured here. After all, they owe their existence to the Romans. Ours are somewhat younger, though, dating from Victorian and Edwardian times but, in our opinion at

(Pictured: A selection of tiles designed by William de Morgan

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So, farewell then wonderful Wedgwood

So, farewell then wonderful Wedgwood (at least in the form we know it today). You will be sorely missed … Last week, and with virtually the same words, this column mourned the passing of Woolworths.  Now another great institution is on the ropes.

Click here to see a Wedgwood wonderland

     Venture capitalists circle over the Barlaston works, enticed by Receivers who will be the only winners in the game, while a talented workforce of Staffordshire potters nervously awaits its fate.
    Founded by the great Josiah in 1759, Wedgwood once produced wares that everyone wanted to buy from Catherine the Great to people like my parents who just wanted a smart Sunday best teaset. Not any more it seems.
    The youngest of 12 children, Josiah was born at his parents' pottery in Burslem. He started school at the age of six, but was forced to leave on his father's death at nine.
    He then worked then for five years as apprentice in the family pot bank, but was then

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