Ceramic tiles featuring ‘The Legend of Good Wimmen’

These tiles come from a series depicting heroines from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Legend of Goode Wimmen, a poem recounting stories of virtuous women who suffered or died through love. These were William Morris’s firm’s most popular designs, and can be found in the form of stained glass and embroidery. Other heroines include Dido, Lucretia and Philomela. The panel of Cleopatra was likely to be painted by one the female associates of the firm (of whom did most of the painting). The other panel, labelled ‘If Hope Were Not Heart Should Break’ has Burne-Jones’s initials on it, suggesting it was painted by him.