Cambridge Tile: Covington’s Enduring Art Tile Works
Across the river from Cincinnati, in Covington, Kentucky, one of America’s longest-lived tile works quietly turned out a century of fireplace and floor tile — and some genuinely fine relief art along the way. If AETCo was the giant, Cambridge was the survivor.
A family business in Covington
The company grew out of the Busse family’s brickyard. J.J. Busse and his sons, with the tilemaker Herman Binz, began making tile in the 1880s; the Cambridge Art Tile Works was established in 1887, and within a couple of years merged with a sister operation to become the Cambridge Tile Manufacturing Company, at 16th and Woodburn in Covington. From there it made enameled, glazed, and unglazed tile “for hearths, facings, fireplaces, walls and floors” — the full architectural range.
Relief, glaze, and the German hand
Like its Ohio-valley neighbors, Cambridge hired European-trained modelers, and its best figural relief — putti and cherubs, hunt scenes, classical panels — stands with the finest American art tile of the period. It is also known for rich crystalline and mottled fireplace glazes: teals, cocoas, and smoke that shift across a surround.
Marks & identification
Most Cambridge tile is simply marked “Cambridge” impressed on the back, which makes attribution straightforward. Field tiles are typically dust-pressed with a buff body; the art tiles carry crisp relief under those signature glazes.
The long life
Where most art-tile makers were undone by the Depression, Cambridge adapted. New owners moved the works to Hartwell, Ohio, in the 1930s, and the company kept making tile until 1986 — a run of roughly a century, one of the longest in the American trade.
Relic Asylum — Tiles with past lives.
Sources & further reading
- Cambridge Art Tile Works / Cambridge Tile Manufacturing Company — Kovels
- Kenton County Historical Society Bulletin — Cambridge Tile.