This booklet documents two rare and fully restored installations by the Grueby Faience and Tile Company, now on permanent display at the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Both projects illustrate Grueby’s mastery of custom tilework and the museum’s commitment to preserving landmark examples of Arts and Crafts design.
The Iris Bathroom, created circa 1910 for the Clay residence in Bratenahl, Ohio, was a private suite featuring over 2,000 custom-made tiles. Designed under Addison LeBoutillier’s direction, it combines sky-blue field tiles, pond lily floor borders, and unique iris wall tiles found nowhere else. Rescued intact in 2004, each tile was removed, cataloged, and reinstalled to original dimensions, offering a rare glimpse into early 20th-century luxury and craftsmanship.
The Aloha Landing tile floor was installed in 1912 in a Newport, Rhode Island boathouse serving Arthur Curtiss James’s yacht, Aloha. The centerpiece depicts the vessel surrounded by eighteen large ship portraits, each executed in matte glazes using the cuerda seca technique. Preserved for ninety years before its removal and restoration, the floor remains one of the few surviving large-scale Grueby marine commissions.
Through detailed photography, historical context, and restoration accounts, the publication highlights both installations as enduring achievements in American tile artistry and as significant cultural artifacts saved through the efforts of the Two Red Roses Foundation.
