Figure 18 Tile, Holland, ca. 1660–1680. Delftware. 5.11" x 5.11" x .39". Left: The front shows a figure of uncertain sex who carries a spear and rides on a stylized strip of ocean. Right: The back is ornamented with enigmatic doodles, the largest being the letters SHI, which, if viewed in retrograde, would read IHS but for the S being reversed. The possible Christian symbolism is enhanced by reading the upper doodle as a cross drawn up out of the H. The fact that it is capped with a sunflower(?) and has one bird sitting on the lateral bar and another falling off it does not lend itself to such an interpretation, however. The two objects under the SHI might or might not be dice. The front and back of this tile are poorly painted, the deep cobalt blue speckled and cracked beneath the glaze. The clay is pink with iron inclusions. The edges are sharply beveled, with two pinholes inset from the oxhead corners.
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