An 11.25m2 Landrecies ceramic in a cool palette

An antique French ceramic floor, totalling 11.25m2 / 121 sq ft., complete with its orginal borders and all four border corner tiles.

In a cool palette of greys, blues and off white the floor was manufactured by Societe Francaise des Ceramiques de Landrecies (NORD), France c.1920-1930. The strongly geometric field tiles are complimented by a fluid, floral themed border, both of which are 14.2cm square and c.15mm thick.

The floor has restored well as a randomly selected section of around 1m2 of tiles show in the photo gallery. We also include scans from the original Landrecies catalogue in our possession showing the tiles. Curiously, many of the field tiles are reverse marked with a + or - sign, which we have never seen before in many years of trading and working with many hundreds of reclaimed floors! 

Tile quantities, give or take one or two:-

Field tiles – 490 - 9.9m2 /  10.8 sq ft.

Large border tiles -  70 plus 4 corners – 1.5m2 / 16 sq ft. –  10.5 linear metres / 34.5 linear ft.

NOTE
Antique tiles were most commonly made in single or two tile moulds. Before current computer automation methods their moulds were made my hand and the colour slips mixed by eye. Kiln temperatures could also be variable, as could the firing time. The result is that often tiles display subtle size and thickness variations and there can be tonal variations in colours, owing to the slip mixing and/or firing time. All of this makes these handmade tiles unique and adds to their charm. Some floors display their subtle variations in size and tones, some not, but when photographing we always take a random section of the floor so that it is representative of the whole. A tiler should always dry lay a section of the tiles to familiarise himself with them before starting to fix lay.