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Low Art Tile Company
The Low Art Tile Company, of Chelsea, Massachusetts, was one of the largest and most successful makers of American art tiles in the last quarter of the 19th Century. Its product line initially consisted of a series of beautiful tile fireplace surrounds, and later they diversified by creating ornate soda fountains. They also made a number of cast iron parlor stoves with tile inserts, as well as a vast array of other products, sometimes in conjunction with other manufacturers.

Beginning
John Gardner Low and his father John started the J. and J.G. Art Tile Works in 1877, and John Farnsworth Low replaced his grandfather in 1883 (thus J.G & J.F. Low). Low tiles are usually marked with the manufacturer’s name on the reverse side of the tile, and the word “patent” often appears before the words “art tile” in the early tiles (1879-1889). The company was incorporated on August 28, 1889, and the name changed to the Low Art Tile Company. After 1899 it was called simply the Low Tile Company. The works ceased production around 1904.

The Low Works
The Low works were located at the corner of Broadway and Stockton streets in Chelsea. The works covered a site slightly larger than a football field. In 1890 eleven kilns were at work. 1,500 tiles might be produced in a day. Moses King wrote in his Handbook of the United States: “These exquisite tiles, Moorish or classic, Renaissance or Elizabethan, with flowers or portraits in high relief, are used extensively for friezes and borders, hearths and fireplaces…”

Publications
The Lows produced three major publications. The Illustrated Catalogue of Art Tiles was published annually from 1881 to 1884, and a 1887 edition had 51 plates, four in color. The New York World noted that “from cover to cover this work bears evidence of the most refined decorative taste, and is worthy a place in every art library in the country.”

Plastic Sketches
The 1886 deluxe Plastic Sketches portfolio was more of a collectors’ edition than a catalogue, as these unique tiles were produced in limited numbers. The satin portfolio was held together with a lace band, as the photogravures were printed on unbound, loose plates. Sylvester Baxter, a Boston journalist and poet, wrote a six page appreciation of these forty-seven dramatic tiles. The Lows also published a small, less expensive Plastic Sketches brochure in 1882. The plastic sketches were made by hand, not by the mass production method using a tile press. The stock was pressed into a mold, and there were few limits on the size of the tile. The original designs were formed in wax or clay, from which the plaster mold was made. These relief tiles, often quite large, were intended to be framed and hung on walls like oil paintings. A sampling of their titles indicate the diversity or their subjects: “Escaping a Simoon” (showing riders on horses), “English Gypsies,” “The Windmill,” “Tuning Up” (a fiddler), “An Elizabethan Lady,” “Alceste” and “An Egyptian Character (the Sheik).” (10)

Soda Fountains
The 1889 catalogue of fourteen soda fountains was largely a color production.

Business and Awards
Representatives of the Low tile company had showrooms in at least sixteen North American cities, from Boston to San Francisco, Montreal to St. Louis. The widely advertised Low tiles sold well and today may be found in average homes as well as the surviving grand houses of the Gilded Age. The Low company won numerous awards throughout its existence. A silver medal was awarded at the 1879 Cincinnati Industrial Exposition, just shortly after production started. Its most important award, a gold medal, came a year later at the London, Liverpool and Manchester Agricultural Society at Crewe, near Stoke-upon-Trent. It was awarded to the finest display of artistically executed tiles in relief or intaglio. The Lows were in competition with the best known English manufacturers.

John Gardner Low
In the beginning John Gardner Low, trained as a painter in Paris, experimented in producing “natural” tiles using “dust process” and a tile press. This method had been used by others previous to Low, but he patented the complicated process in 1879. John Gardner Low (Jan. 10, 1835 – Nov. 10, 1907.) was acquainted with many important artists during his lifetime – they included Constant Troyon, Thomas Couture, William Morris Hunt, Elihu Vedder, William Rimmer, William Henry Grueby, Childe Hassam, Francis Davis Millet and members of the Tile Club of New York city.

Firing the kilns
The first successful firing of the Low kilns occurred in May 1879. At about this time the Lows hired Arthur Osborne (born Arthur Monk, Aug. 13, 1855 - Nov. 11, 1942), a highly creative English artist, to be their chief modeler. They also employed George Robertson as their glaze technician, who John Farnsworth Low joined after his graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The success of the pottery was assured by the combined talents of this team of brilliant men.

Colors
The Low glazes included pale yellows, dark cobalt blues, crushed raspberries, tans, golden olive-greens, lustrous browns, whites and black.

These relief tiles are physically shallow but there is a gradation of color – a distribution of light and shade - due to delicate surface modulations. The semi-transparent glaze pools in the recessed areas, giving a sense of depth and a deeper tone. The glaze thins on the elevated portions, and has a lighter shade of color.

After 1904
A 1955 Boston Globe story described how Sumner Hinckley, a retired Duxbury, Mass. man, in 1950 purchased a forgotten treasure trove (28,000, 11 ½ tons, in 392 boxes) of Low tiles from a Cambridge tile dealer named Hugo Baratta. Hinckley died in 1965 before selling all that owned, and an antique dealer named William Cavallini bought the remainder from Hinckley’s widow.

Further Reading

Harris, Amanda. “Fireplace stories.” Wide Awake 22, December 1885. Pp 42-50

Kaplan, Wendy. “The art that is life:” The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1987.

Karlson, Norman. American art tile, 1876-1941. New York, Rizzoli, 1998.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In pursuit of beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement. New York, Rizzoli, 1986.

Morse, Barbara White. “The Low family of Chelsea, Massachusetts and their pottery.” Spinning Wheel, vol. 33, September 1977, pp 28-33. Pennington, Richard. “‘It will be like enchantment…’ – the achievement of the Low Art Tile Company.” Journal of the American Art Pottery Association, Summer 2011, pp. 12-24

Pisano, Ronald G. The Tile Club and the Aesthetic Movement in America. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1999

Watkins, Lura Woodside. “Low’s art tiles.” Antiques 45, May 1944. Pp. 250-252