One of the products advertised by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in a circular of 1862 was "Painted Earthen- ware, including wall tiles with pictured subjects, figures or pat- terns." Morris had established the practice of importing white tin-glazed tiles from Holland, which could be painted in enamel and refired (several times, if necessary, for elaborate colors) in his stained-glass kiln. Early experiments included designs by Burne-Jones for a pair of tiles with Adam and Eve and a series of the heroines from Chaucer's "The Legend of Goode Wimmen" (see cat. no. 29), so the firm was fully pre- pared for a substantial commission from Birket Foster for large tile panels to stand above three bedroom fireplaces in his new house, The Hill, at Witley, Surrey. 1 The painting of the tiles was largely executed by Kate and Lucy Faulkner (sisters of Morris's partner Charles Faulkner), working from designs supplied by Burne-Jones. His account book includes numerous entries dating from 1862 to 1864 that relate to tiles, the significant ones being for September 30, 1862: "10 designs for Tiles Cinderella £7.10. o."; July 26, 1863: "Beauty & the Beast £6.0.0."; and January 1864: "To 10 designs of 'Sleeping Beauty' at the mean and unremunerative price of 30/- [shillings] ea[ch] £15.0.0." In addition to the overmantels, there are also figures in the fireplaces below complementing Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. All three panels have sur- rounds offering the first recorded use of the swan-pattern tile, now attributed to Morris. Each set of tiles was repeated once within the next ten years (with some individual variants of Sleeping B eauty) ^ but none in such a spectacular manner as the originals. Despite his habitual complaint over receiving less than he deserved in payment, Burne-Jones must have taken enormous pleasure in constructing these visual narratives, which gave him valuable experience on which to draw when it came to devising more important series of paintings, such as Saint George and the Dragon (cat. nos. 31, 33, 34) and Cupid and Psyche (cat. nos. 4oa-l, 41, 42). There was also the sheer fun of it, pro- viding "a welcome outlet for his abounding humour, and in this form the stories of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella took at his hands as quaint a shape as they wear in the pages of the Brothers Grimm of blessed memory." 2 As always in the artist's work, there are figure groups that resonate with previous inspiration or suggest refinements still to come: the musicians in the third scene of Cinderella derive from The Wedding Procession of Sir Degrevaunt (cat. no. n); the first scene of Beauty and the Beast prefigures the composition of Princess Sabra Drawing the Lot (cat. no. 33), from Saint George and the Dragon; and, most strikingly, the central image of Sleeping Beauty precisely foreshadows The Briar Wood (cat. no. 55), the first painting in the Briar Rose series of 1871-73. 1. For a full account of the Witley "fairytale narratives," see Myers and Myers 1996, pp. 28-59, including photographs of the panels in situ (figs. 53-55). 2. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 249; as the authors point out, only Sleeping Beauty was written by the brothers Grimm, Cinderella being by Charles Perrault and Beauty and the Beast by Madame de Beaumont.