Antique Grueby Faience Company Framed Arts and Crafts Ceramic Tile. Stunning example of their work, depicting a knight on horseback in stark green and rust hues with a chocolate-brown frame. Paper label with information and prior pricing on both front and back. 

Overall Size: 12 x 12 in. 

Sight Size: 6 x 6 in. 

Frame Thickness: 1 1/4 in. 

The Grueby Faience Company was an American ceramics company that produced distinctive American art pottery vases and tiles during America’s Arts and Crafts Movement. It was founded in 1894 in Revere, Massachusetts by William Henry Grueby (1867-1925), who had been inspired by the matte glazes on French pottery and the refined simplicity of Japanese ceramics he had seen at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago the previous year. He was quickly joined by the architect-designer William Graves, who steered the company towards the production of tile and outdoor decor. During its first years, the company produced glazed architectural terra cotta and faience tiles, soon followed by simple art pottery vases designed by George Prentiss Kendrick. Beginning in 1897 and 1898 Grueby introduced matte glazes, including a matte cucumber green that soon became the company’s hallmark. Grueby’s work won two gold medals and one silver medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, followed by bronze medals at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York and a gold medal at both the 1901 St. Petersburg Exhibition of Ceramics and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Grueby Faience was a primary source of architectural items during the zenith of the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau periods in the United States. Graves and Kendrick were eventually replaced by the architect Addison LeBoutillier and Henry Belknap, who had worked with Louis Comfort Tiffany. Later, Karl Langenbeck, formerly of the Rookwood Pottery, became superintendent, extending their market overseas to France and England. Gustav Stickley incorporated Grueby tiles in his stands and tables and shared a stand with them at the Pan-American Exposition, and Tiffany & Co. used Grueby lamp bases. Their works were so popular that they inspired mass-market competition, and the company went bankrupt in 1909. Grueby emerged from bankruptcy and began limited production runs that included statues, pottery, and tiles until 1911. A fire in the manufactory destroyed many assets in 1913, and the effort to rebuild led the company into further financial difficulty. In 1917 the C. Pardee Works in Perth Amboy, New Jersey bought out the company’s assets and works, and the Grueby facility in Massachusetts closed for good in 1920.