Bespoke commission
“Whenever I visit a religious building, I am the one staring down at the floor whilst everyone else gazes heavenwards into the vaulted roofs.”
We can make larger collections of tiles that can build up to form a pavement for a indoor or covered area outside. We can supply all the tiles required and work with you to find a local paver to install the tiles.
Tom makes inlaid floor tiles in the medieval Wessex style: red clay with a pattern stamped into it, white clay filling the pattern, and a glaze over the top. Tiles like these covered the floors of English churches and abbeys until the dissolution of the monasteries, when the craft died out. It is now listed as critically endangered on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Tom traces each design from an original medieval pavement and cuts it as a lino stamp. He presses about two pounds of clay into a wooden mould, stamps the design in and pipes white clay into the hollows. Once the tile has hardened, he scrapes back the surplus to reveal the pattern, then glazes it and fires it once. The red clay comes from his garden in the Meon Valley, about twelve miles from Otterbourne, where many of Winchester's medieval tiles were made.
His biggest project so far is a roundel from Muchelney Church in Somerset, which the Victorians pieced together from fragments of the abbey next door. Tom traced every ring on site and rebuilt it at home to its original design, three feet across, with each curved piece cut by hand.
Tom runs one-day courses that start at Titchfield Abbey, a couple of miles from his pottery near Wickham. Students choose a design from the medieval floor, cut their own stamp and make their own tiles. He also gives talks to history societies and pottery groups, and writes up everything he learns on his blog.
Tom has been a potter for most of his life. He started at school, taught himself to throw, and met his wife, also a potter, on a course in Brittany. He made stoneware for many years, until craft fairs and gallery mark-ups wore him down. He first saw medieval floor tiles at a concert at the Hospital of St Cross in Winchester, and made his first one in the summer of 2024.
