Zinc Hydroxide 8.39 tile panel
Crystallographer: Helen Megaw; designed by Reginald Till for Carter and Co.
The designer of this hand-painted earthenware tile panel has
taken a tiny section of a crystal structure diagram and blown it up
to a huge scale. Carter and Co., the parent company of Poole
Pottery, had a long track record of innovative design. Although
X-ray crystallography was too specific to lead to a new school of
design, atomic and molecular motifs were widely adopted as part of
the aesthetic vocabulary of postwar design. Helen Megaw, the
crystallographer behind the design of this tile panel, continued to
pursue her interest in crystal structure patterns and later
supplied designs to several manufacturers, both inside and outside
the original group.