Early 20th Century Design 
19 January 2023
Early 20th Century Design 
102

Frederick Roth for Grueby Faience Company, attribution

Rare tile with elephants

USA, c. 1907-12
glazed earthenware 5¼ h × 8½ w × ¾ d in (13 × 22 × 2 cm)
estimate: $7,500–10,000
result: $11,970
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Rago would like to thank Susan J. Montgomery and Dr. Jonathan Clancy for their gracious assistance in cataloging this lot.
Glazed mark to verso ‘FW’.
provenance: Important Private Collection

This work will ship from Rago in Lambertville, New Jersey.

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Frederick Roth, Animalier

Frederick Roth, Elephant panel, pictured in Arts & Decoration, Vol. 2, No. 6 (April 1912)


Frederick G. R. Roth (1872-1944) was already a noted sculptor of animals, predominantly in bronze, when he began to experiment with clay. Roth consulted with Charles Fergus Binns, director of the New York State School of Ceramics at Alfred, after which he worked with Adelaide Robineau to produce at least one porcelain, Licking Calf, in 1906. By 1907 he was working for Grueby on tiles and panels. The present tile is not marked by Grueby, however, Rago sold a nearly identical elephant tile with a Grueby stamp in 2009, hence the present lot’s attribution to the company. It is without a doubt designed by Frederick Roth: a tile frieze of the same design by Roth was pictured in a 1912 article by Griffith Wells and, as scholar Susan Montgomery notes, a larger Roth-signed panel of the same design was given to the Smithsonian in 1956 by E. Stanley Wires, Grueby's long-time business associate, who identified it as a Grueby tile. Roth specialized in portraying living animals and won awards for his sculptures at the Pan-American Exposition (1901) in Buffalo, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904) in St. Louis, and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915) in San Francisco.

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