19th c. German Tiled Desk

In a small German farmhouse, a desk set with tiles like these on the top would have been the heart of the room, the painted blue florals brightening the corner where the morning light fell. Found in Beziers, this antique German tile-top desk is built in pale oak with twelve hand-painted faience tiles set into the top, a single drawer in the apron, and four tapered legs. Germany has been making Fayence, its own version of tin-glazed blue-and-white pottery, since the 1600s, when factories at Frankfurt and Ansbach started painting in their own looser folk style, with more flowers than Dutch Delft, more freedom in the brush, every tile a small painting of its own. Sylvie sets it under a window with a stack of letters, a small lamp, and a chair pulled in close.