Carol Janeway

The main venue for her ceramics was Georg Jensen Inc. from 1942 -1949, while Gimbels, I. Magnin, Gumps and other stores also sold her wares. She had three successive studios in Greenwich Village until the early 1950s when she worked out of her home in Milligan Place in Greenwich Village. She was featured in a 1945 issue of Life Magazine for her work with ceramic tiles.[1]

In 1948 Janeway became the first American to design for noted British manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood & Sons. Two Janeway plates appeared in the 1948 Wedgwood exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.[2]

She designed and produced a line of ceramic chess, backgammon and checker sets. Of the 32 artists invited to exhibit in "The Imagery of Chess", a dada-surrealist art event at the Julien Levy Gallery from December 1944 to January 1945, she was one of two female artists whose chess sets were featured.[3]

She decorated many tile fireplace surrounds installed mainly in the New York area.

Works by Janeway are held by several museums, including the Cooper-Hewitt[4] and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which holds Janeway's papers in addition to some tile work. The Janeway art and papers sold by her estate are in a private collection.

Born Caroline Bacon Rindsfoos in Brooklyn, she eloped in 1932 with fellow Cornell student Eliot Janeway and kept the name after the failure of the marriage in 1934. She lived in London from 1933 through 1939 with various trips to Moscow, Paris, Capri. She studied lithography in London.

During World War Two, French sculptor Ossip Zadkine, in self-exile in New York, lived with her and mentored her artistic career. She was the subject of many portraits by artists including Zadkine.[5] and Maya Deren.[6]

From the 1950s she became increasingly active in preserving Greenwich Village, notably Milligan and Patchin Places, working alongside Jane Jacobs, Doris Diether and Ruth Wittenberg among others.