The Beauty of Ceramic Wall Art

QUESTION: At a recent antique show I saw a framed ceramic wall plaque that, according to the dealer, Rookwood Pottery had made. I know about Rookwood art pottery and own a couple of pieces, but I never knew the company made plaques. This particular one depicted a snow scene and came in a simple wooden frame. It seemed rather expensive to me, so I passed on it for now. What can you tell me about Rookwood plaques? Were they only produced for a limited time? And did they come framed or did people frame them?

ANSWER: Rookwood scenic plaques aren’t as well known as their art pottery. They were more artistic and more expensive than their art pottery pieces, so the average person didn’t usually buy them.

Rookwood Pottery perfected the production of ceramic tiles based on an ancient form of pottery craftsmanship. Many consider it to be America's finest pottery, beginning in the early 1900s and continuing through the 1930s.

Shortly after the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876, American ceramic artists began making utilitarian wares. But unlike utilitarian objects, Rookwood produced tiles for architectural and utilitarian reasons, while its plaques were purely decorative. The company produced plaques depicting landscapes, seascapes, and the occasional figural paintings from 1910 to 1930.

Primarily, Rookwood produced these plaques using slip decoration, finishing them in a vellum glaze. Most featured landscapes, and many took on a tonalist quality. Plaques displayed a variety of pastel colors, a few had snow scenes, and the majority had a bit of crazing resulting when the outer glaze contracts at a different rate than the underglaze painting or the ceramic body, rendering a lightly checked outer surface. Most early plaques had crazing. In later years, Rookwood learned how to make uncrazed plaques.

Rookwood produced many more ceramic vases and such than plaques, thus fewer people know about them. The original price hand-written on the back of an uncrazed plaque was usually higher in comparison to the price shown on the reverse of a crazed plaque.

Though the production of a plaque was simpler than that of a vase because an artist had a flat tile "canvas" on which to work, they did warp, but in spite of this, the value of plaques today exceeds that of their vase counterparts from the same time period.

Plaques are also more expensive because they’re classified as fine art. Rookwood made fewer of them than vases. A typical plaque originally cost around $175. Very few scenic vases with a vellum glaze would have been that expensive. Usually, the original price workers wrote the original price on the backs of tiles in pencil in the upper right-hand corner.

Artists who painted Rookwood plaques took their inspiration from local landscapes, with the exception of the Venetian scenes, painted by Carl Schmidt and Ed Diers. Though a plaque may have depicted a scene of snow-capped mountains, that certainly wasn’t part of the surrounding landscape, but more likely taken from a painting viewed at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Art Museum. located near the Rookwood pottery works. Early standard-glaze plaques, produced between 1900 and 1905, often feature Dutch or English gentlemen, as well as American Indians. The images of the European gentlemen came from famous paintings while those of the Indians probably came from photographs.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Rookwood produced faience plaques or tiles, usually made for installation into homes or commercial buildings. They almost always  covered these in a matt glaze, occasionally made with a painted and carved design, but primarily in a cloisonne fashion.

Rookwood plaques come in a variety of sizes, the smallest usually being 4 by 8 inches, and the largest, 14 by 16 inches. Most of the time, these plaques are uncrazed and unaffected by warpage. Because of their impressive size and fine decoration, they  bring a premium price today.

While artists who painted with oil on canvas could view the colors and brushstrokes as they produced them, those who painted Rookwood plaques with clay slip, couldn’t be sure how a color would look after firing. They may have applied the slip heavily, thus rendering “crawling” to the glaze. Perhaps the green trees would appear more blue, the pink sky too pale, or blue water some other shade.

Artists such as E.T. Hurley, Fred Rothenbusch, Ed Diers, Lenore Asbury, Sara Sax and Sallie did some of the best quality and most artistic work for Rookwood. Hurley was among the best at producing quality tonalist plaques, from nocturnal scenes to beautifully painted beech trees to landscapes with a vivid pink sky and exquisite mountain ranges.

Fred Rothenbusch produced some of the best large plaques. His color palette leaned towards deep purples, dark blues, and light rose. Ed Diers painted great landscapes and was one of the best at painting trees. Some of his plaques included forest interior scenes with bold tree trunks and an almost three-dimensional quality. Lenore Asbury also painted distinctive trees and employed a wonderful range of colors and was one of the best at painting tonalist landscapes. Carl Schmidt was famous for his Venetian scene plaques.

Some collectors seek plaques by a certain artist. Others go by theme or other criteria.  For instance, some want snow scenes while others prefer harbor scenes. Some want only uncrazed examples, and some want colorful ones.


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The First Home Improvement Companion

QUESTION: At a community book sale recently, I was going through a box of old magazines and discovered a copy of The Craftsman, a magazine from the early 1900s. It looked interesting, so I put it with the rest of the items I intended to purchase and bought it. As I was going through the books and such I bought a few days later, I noticed that the publisher was Gustav Stickley. Is this the same person who made Mission furniture? Also, what can you tell me about The Craftsman?

ANSWER: It is indeed the one and the same person. And The Craftsman magazine was Stickley’s pride and joy and the first of its kind to discuss home improvement and design.

Gustav Stickley was one of the most important figures in the Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States. He was a furniture maker who became a leader in the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts Movement as well as in the production of objects suitable for use that followed its principles. And although he wasn’t a craftsman himself, he successfully inspired craftsmen to carry out his concepts.

Also, he knew the value of publicity in selling his products and his ideas. He used his magazine, entitled The Craftsman, which he edited and published during the 15 years he was active in the Movement, as his main means of promotion.  At its peak, The Craftsman reached 60,000 subscribers and featured articles and essays on Stickley's many interests and concerns.

Gustav Stickley often referred to himself as "the craftsman" and used the term "craftsman" in many ways. The furniture he sold was Craftsman—not "mission"—furniture, his version of the Arts and Crafts movement was the Craftsman Movement, and his monthly magazine was The Craftsman.

He published the first issue of his magazine in October 1901 in  Eastwood, New.York, where he had located his furniture factory. Later he moved The Craftsman to Syracuse and finally to New York City. The premier issue emphasized the work and ideas of William Morris through an article entitled “William Morris, Some Thoughts Upon His Life.”

Irene Sargent, professor of art history at the University of Syracuse, served as Stickley's principal editor. She wrote many of the articles in the magazine’s early years. A very persuasive person, Stickley was able to obtain contributions from such notables as Louis Sullivan, Jacob Riis, Leopold Stokowski, John Burroughs, and Jane Addams. They covered a wide variety of subject matter, from architecture to art and nature, as well as the concepts of social reform prevalent at the time.

Though he was an idealist, Gustav Stickley had to eat. The Craftsman offered him lots of advertising  space for his growing furniture business. Thirteen pictures of furniture made by Stickley's company, United Crafts, included a round table, an armchair, and a settle, followed an article entitled “An Argument for Simplicity in Household Furnishings” in the first issue. The Craftsman also showed readers how to use the furniture in its many illustrations of room settings. Over the years, Stickley added metalwork, lighting fixtures, textiles and other items to his product line, and also to The Craftsman.

He often commented on the Craftsman ideal. Stickley believed an ideal kind of life encompassed beauty, economy, reason, comfort, and progress. It didn’t satisfy him to merely achieve this ideal in furniture but he felt that consumers must also have the right kind of houses in which to place the furniture. He no sooner began  designing Craftsman houses than he realized that people wanted Craftsman fabrics and accessories of all kinds. In other words, he believed in the concept of total interior design.

While early issues had somewhat smaller covers, ones beginning in 1913 had larger ones measuring 8 by 11 inches. Stickley printed all of them on brown or tan stock and usually featured a wood block decoration in two or more colors, initialed by the artist. Each issue consisted of 100-140 white and glossy pages, and later ones had as many as 175 pages.

Plans for Craftsman houses, some small and simple, others more elaborate, attributed to Stickley as the architect, although he had no architectural training. People built many of these houses using Stickley’s plans.  The Craftsman also featured short fiction and poetry, as well as the work of famous photographers.

Besides articles about Stickley’s products, The Craftsman often included ones about other makers of Arts and Crafts objects. For example, a 1903 article, “An Art Industry of the Bayous: The Pottery of Newcomb College” by Irene Sargent, documents the early history of Newcomb pottery. Photographs of the pottery school and examples of early high glaze pieces accompanied it. There were also essays devoted to philosophical, political and social commentary, usually promoting the simple life

The magazine also offered all kinds of practical and how-to advice, from gardening to leather tooling to embroidery to purchasing household appliances.

It also included advertisements by manufacturers whose products are now greatly valued by collectors, for example, Rookwood pottery, Heisey glassware, Handel lamps, and Homer Laughlin china.

Unfortunately, Stickley overextended himself and in 1915 had to file for bankruptcy. But The Craftsman was the first periodical to emphasize the importance of harmony in a home’s interior, harmony which was to be created through attention paid to walls, floors, windows, textiles, small objects and furniture.