Reuben Haley

American, 1872-1933

BiographyReuben Haley brought one of the most innovative and extreme expressions of Art Deco style to factory-produced ceramics and glass in the United States in the early decades of the twentieth century. Haley’s design influence spread through his work as a mold maker for household goods created by companies in Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California. He is probably best known in the early twenty-first century for the “Ruba Rombic” line that was produced in both ceramics and glass. This line of functional tableware and other three-dimensional decorative pieces borrows heavily from French Art Deco glass. It was also influenced directly by Cubism, a controversial style grabbing international attention at the time in Europe that inspired fashion, architecture, and decorative arts. In the United States, the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art held at the 69th Regiment Armory is often ascribed as the introduction of Cubism to the American populace. In goods made for the American market in the 1920s and 1930s, this influence has a less conceptual approach but rather illustrates strong formal aesthetic impact.

Haley experienced Cubism first-hand at the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes and immediately adapted the faceted and fractured sensibility to his designs that were being sold in American department stores to a middle-class audience. A 1928 advertisement tells us that Haley took the name “Ruba Rombic” from ruba’i, a Persian poetry genre and rhombic from the world of geometry, meaning an irregular shape with no right angles. Together the name implies something refined and expressionistic even though the wares were mass produced. The line for glassware was premiered by Consolidated Lamp and Glass Co. (Coraopolis, PA, previously, Fostoria, OH) in 1928 at a glass fair in Pittsburgh and was declared, “an absolutely cubist creation” (see TMA 1993.6). A sensational seven-page advertising spread promoting “Ruba Rombic, An Epic in Modern Art,” was published in the February 1928 issue of The Gift and Art Shop. The dramatic images even included the oddly shaped shadows cast by various forms, as if to flaunt their irregularity. Another advertisement had a jagged outline, mimicking the lines of the glass.

Haley’s novel “Ruba Rombic” tableware mold designs competed with the huge quantity of American factory glass and ceramics and he took out three patents for the designs, filed in February 1928. Despite its novelty, production ceased at Consolidated Glass during the Great Depression, in 1932. Two other factories in the Pittsburgh area had come out with rival modern patterns by then. Additionally, molds were often sold from factory to factory as companies went out of business or merged, making it challenging to track a single designer’s work. The practice of closely imitating successful goods on the market and the sharing of molds (as well as mold-makers and designers) makes it difficult if not impossible to link these unmarked objects to a particular factory today.

Soon after being produced in glass, Haley adapted his design for a line of pottery made by the Muncie Pottery Company of Muncie, Indiana. Resulting in the five examples offered here for acquisition. Represented in three different forms and two glaze combinations, the clay examples are not as readily available as glass and it is likely that not as many were made in ceramic. The sides of these vase forms – both tall and short – project and jut out at sharp angles, giving a jagged new perspective to the traditional vessel. Although Haley is not credited in the 1929 Muncie Clay Products catalog, his association with the “Ruba Rombic” line is well documented through glass production.

Fashion and textile design were a natural place for American design to absorb a painting style with the ability to transfer the faceted and collage like imagery to another two-dimensional surface. Ruth Reeves’ 1930 “Electric” Coverlet is a dynamic example of this impact on fabric (Yale University Art Gallery, 1995.49.1). In silver, Erik Magnussen’s 1929 “Cubic” coffee service and flatware for Gorham Silver Company (RISD 1991.126.488) reveals another designer’s ability to bring modernism to the tabletop by replacing traditional forms with irregular edges and curious profiles. In glass, the design is well collected in American museums with a strength in American decorative arts and design including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum. An excellent example in ceramic is held at the Yale University Art Gallery. The Muncie ceramics relate to works already in the TMA collection. Most closely, Haley’s same pattern produced in glass (Vase, TMA 1993.6) as well as the strong Art Deco form by Lalique (Tourbillon Vase, 1979.5). Works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque connect what began as a two-dimensional effort to Haley’s three-dimensional forms to provide a greater understanding of design influence and the transference of ideas and aesthetics between artistic forms and production.

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