(above) Current view of Cooper-Union building on Astor Place (East 8th St), home of the Cooper-Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration which collection, in the late 1960s, formed a basis for the present Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design (Smithsonian Institution).

calvin_hathaway

(above) Art historian Calvin S. Hathaway (1907-1974), seen here in his role as one of the “Monuments Men” of WWII, was  a curator of the Cooper Union Museum before  the war and, after the war, he ultimately became director.  Building up a decorated tiles collection for the museum, Hathaway acquired four Janeway tiles in 1947.  Janeway’s studio at 47 East 8th street was one block from Cooper Union. One of these tiles is yet preserved in the Cooper-Hewitt collection. It depicts a housefly in black and green underglaze decoration:

An article Victoria Jenssen posted on the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum about this tile:

https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18606771/