Bluebeard Tile

Set into the exterior of the library chimney, the Bluebeard Tile is a unique example of the work of the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, an Arts and Crafts ceramics company founded by Henry Chapman Mercer in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1899. George Gough Booth purchased this tile from the Moravian Works through the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts on Christmas Eve in 1918.

Mercer was a man of many talents—a lawyer, archaeologist, curator, architect, and ceramicist. In 1908 he invented “brocade” tile, as seen in this piece, setting three-dimensional molded ceramic elements in a concrete backing. Both this tile and the Bible Fireplace in the Oak Room at Cranbrook House are examples of Mercer’s brocade work. His Bluebeard fireplace surround, which illustrated the entire fairy tale, was an early experiment from 1917. The design was never produced in full except in a wall of his home, Fonthill Castle. The Cranbrook tile combines two panels from the surround: "The Forbidden Door" (above) and "The Bloody Key" (below). Mercer’s choice of subject may have been influenced by his interest in the fairy tale collections of the Brothers Grimm, as expressions of pre-industrial German culture. The lower scene, however, derives from Charles Perrault’s version of the story, first published in 1697.

In Perrault’s “Blue Beard,” a young woman marries a wealthy man with a blue beard. Soon after their marriage, he departs on a journey, giving her the keys to every room in his house, but ordering her not to open just one door. His wife’s curiosity soon drives her to open the forbidden door, behind which she finds the murdered bodies of his many previous wives. Shocked, she drops the key onto the blood-soaked floor of the room. The key remains stained with blood, no matter how much she and her sister Anne wash it afterward. On Bluebeard’s return, he discovers the stained key. Realizing that she has seen the secret room, he is about to murder her when her brothers arrive and kill Bluebeard instead. The opening of the door and the young wife’s attempts to wash the key are depicted on Mercer’s Bluebeard tile.

Stylistically, the Bluebeard tiles resemble Mercer’s other major brocade tile work, his adaptations of Moravian stove plates into ceramics, as seen in the Oak Room fireplace at Cranbrook House. In these tiles, simply modelled figures are silhouetted against a blank ground, the narrative action conveyed through gesture and a few essential props. The addition of arabesque design motifs to this example recalls nineteenth-century illustrations of "Blue Beard", which often employed costumes and settings that evoked the Near East. Mercer admired Islamic ceramic art and drew inspiration from the three-dimensional tiles at the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain, for this and other designs. The Bluebeard Tile mingles German American, French, and Andalusian cultural influences, as well as modern and traditional craft practices.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024

Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (founded 1906)

Founded on June 26, 1906, the Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts provided an environment where artists, craftsmen, architects, and designers could share ideas and coordinate activities to raise the level of American craftsmanship. Out of their showroom, works by major craftsmen active in Europe and America were exhibited and sold. George Booth was not only one of the founders of the Detroit Society of Arts & Crafts, but also its first president.

The Society’s showroom operated from 1916, when it opened a new building on Watson Street in Detroit, until 1958, when the mission of the Society shifted toward design education (the Art School of the Society of Arts and Crafts had been established in 1926). George Booth worked closely with the Society’s Secretary Helen Plumb sourcing objects for display and sale in the showroom; George Booth also filled his home, Cranbrook House, with items he purchased or commissioned for the showroom. Beyond George Booth, Ellen and the entire Booth family patronized the Society’s showroom for gifts and furnishings for their respective homes. The Booth family continued support of the Society well into the second half of the 20th century, as it reincorporated as the Center for Creative Studies - College of Art and Design (1975 to 2001) and later the College for Creative Studies (2001-present).

Kevin Adkisson
Curator
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
November 2021