Rose Iron Works

Keen on learning about local heritage as a new Clevelander, I took up an invitation from CMA conservators Beth Edelstein and Colleen Snyder to visit the Rose Iron Works studio in October 2023. The CMA’s collection of decorative arts, the care of which I had assumed two months prior, includes Muse with Violin Screen (1930) by Rose Iron Works, one of the most recognizable examples of American Art Deco metalwork. 

The visit to East 43rd Street, the company’s seat for more than 100 years, made a lasting impression. Bob Rose, the owner of the company and the founder’s grandson, gave us a tour. The front office is a showroom of some of the company’s most successful products, predominantly in Art Deco style. We then got a glimpse of the archives, full of original drawings and tools, and an impressive reference library amassed by Bob’s grandfather, which includes trade catalogues, books, locks, and other small iron objects from Europe, dating from the Medieval period to the early 1900s. At the back, there is a big workshop with machinery, traditional anvils, and, tucked away in the corners, historical works by the company salvaged from Cleveland’s buildings. I knew it was material for a special project.

2025 is a perfect occasion for a focus exhibition on Rose Iron Works: This year, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Art Deco. In 1925, a groundbreaking exhibition in Paris presented modern decorative arts, attracting more than 16 million visitors. The style became known as Art Deco. The CMA’s show, Rose Iron Works and Art Deco, focuses on the first 30 years of the company, from its establishment in 1904 to the 1930s when its most celebrated works in the Art Deco style were created. 

Martin Rose, the company’s founder, was first active in Budapest, where he trained in a strict guild system. I was fascinated to learn that he started his career in Gyula Jungfer’s workshop—an artist I have known for years from my family holidays in Budapest. Jungfer is a prominent name in Hungarian art history because he decorated some of the city’s most well-known buildings, published his work, and participated in national and international exhibitions. His eclectic late-1800s style influenced the young Rose, who moved to Cleveland in 1903. Indeed, research confirmed Rose’s earlier pre–Art Deco works—traditional neo-Baroque gates and grilles and organic Art Nouveau shop signs and railings. Most of them are only known from historical images, though wonderfully, some can still be found in Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights mansions. 

The aim of this exhibition is to celebrate Cleveland’s heritage, of which Rose Iron Works was part, but also to place the local company in an international context, including Paris around 1925. Martin Rose closely followed stylistic and technical changes in Europe and naturally adopted the modern style. A gate from Cleveland’s iconic Halle Brothers department store proves that the company had developed its take on Art Deco before the arrival of Paul Fehér, a talented and prolific designer who left Paris for Cleveland to join the Rose workshop in 1929. His fruitful collaboration with the company resulted in some of its best works, including the CMA’s screen. The Rose Iron Works golden age ended with the Great Depression, although thanks to the owner’s innovation and adaptability, the company survived by turning to industrial production. Nevertheless, artistic projects continued, including an ambitious 90-foot frieze of the history of metalworking, created from recycled car fenders. This work is shown in the CMA’s Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery along with other examples of metalwork, as well as drawings by Fehér.