Designed Tiles
In taped interviews of 2005 describing his entire artistic career, Ambellan recounted the beginnings of Designed Tiles.
[2] In the 1930s Depression, unemployed artists in New York City could be paid to train as silkscreen poster designers, stencil-makers, and printers, a program initially set up by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia then, in 1935, incorporated into President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Federal Arts Project (FAP) of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Staff could be laid off, collect unemployment insurance while making their own art, then return to the studio for another stint.
At least one such friend, Manhattanite Carol Janeway, embarked in late 1941 on a career of hand-decorating tile in underglaze.
[6] The story of the Designed Tiles studio and its international staff was circulated nationwide in a 1946 news article syndicated by the Associated Press.
The designs were printed on 6x6 inch unglazed industrial porcelain blanks purchased directly from Wheeling Tile Co.
Among veterans who had silkscreened for the US Army, the most noted artist to establish a studio after the war was Robert Darr Wert.
[2] Lis Ambellan's main role at Designed Tiles became marketing, not the artistic end of the business.
Their FBI records of the 1950s show that agents repeatedly investigated both Harold and Lis about their knowledge of Dr. Robert Soblen, a social friend who, unknown to them, was a Soviet spy.
In 1958, Designed Tiles was purchased by friends of the Ambellans, Steven and Masha Sklansky, whose studio was a 9th-floor loft at 714 Broadway near Cooper Union and NYU's Washington Square College.
They often appear on the market today still packaged in their white cardboard window sheaths printed with Designed Tiles logo.
While no catalog featuring Designed Tiles has appeared originating in the 1958-1978 period, the Sklanskys continued the Ambellans’ model: sell to the trade, fill special orders, fabricate custom-stencilled screens for local ceramists, and run experiments to improve and broaden their offerings.
