Rambusch Decorating Company, Inc.
  Jersey City, New Jersey

Murals Holy Family RC Church		Interior St.  John the Evangelist RC Churh

Partial reprint Rambusch Decorating Company Official website (online April 2021) Since its incorporation on December 17, 1898, the Rambusch Company has remained a small family business producing high-quality, custom-made objects and interiors to suit a wide range of clients. Over a century in existence, the Company has designed and executed more than 45,000 commissions in ecclesiastical arts, church interiors, stained glass, lighting, historic restoration, conservation, replication, art metal, and mosaic. Now in the hands of the fourth generation. Our five workshops are housed in a 45,000 square-foot studio. Here, forty employees from thirteen nations complete work both individually and as a team, depending on project scope. TIMELINE December 17, 1898 Danish Master Painter/Decorator, Frode Christian Valdimar Rambusch establishes his business in NYC. Frode flipped a coin to decide where to begin his career: Imperial Russia or Republican America. In December 1898, Frode opened his office at 160 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 21st Street. 1898-1906 During its early years, Rambusch specialized in painted decoration, glazing, gilding, and murals. 1908-1918 Rambusch broadened its spectrum of services to include art metal and lighting fixtures, the latter in direct response to the introduction of electric illumination. By the 1930s With the establishment of the stained glass studio, Rambusch was designing and working in all the architectural crafts, executing commissions for institutional and domestic interiors. 1947 through February 1998 The Rambusch atelier was located in a curiously shaped seven-story tower at 40 West 13th Street. During this time, the firm got involved in restoration work, which became especially popular in the 1960s. Today Rambusch continues to provide services from two distinct divisions — lighting, and crafts — in art metal work, stained glass, liturgical design and liturgical furnishings, restoration, painting and decorating, and lighting. The workshops are located in Jersey City, NJ.

.Partial reprint Frode Rambusch, Master Decorator Traditional Building, Nov. 9, 2020 (online April 2021) Frode was born in March, 1859. His father was a Lutheran minister in central Jutland, the bleak part of Denmark. Though an ordinary student, at an early age he showed a talent for drawing. In the fall of 1875, he was accepted at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen where he studied drawing and interior decoration for five years. At the same time, he was accepted as an apprentice by Copenhagen's Master Painter, Markussen, and also worked in the drafting rooms of architect, C. V. Nielsen, working out on jobs for 6 months of the year during the good weather and the other six months in school and doing drafting in poor weather.     In 1881, having finished his apprenticeship and schooling, he began his journeyman’s travels. He worked in Dresden, Berlin, Paris, Zurich, Munich, and Vienna. While working in these cities, he usually enrolled in the local art schools, and joined the local Scandinavian social clubs.        In 1888 during a Christmas visit, he became engaged to Valborg Olsen, the sister of one of his workmates in Vienna. Hendrick Olsen was a younger son of Oslo, Norway's top master painter-decorator. They decided to emigrate to New York. Frode came ahead in February of 1889 and went to work for Arnold and Locke in Brooklyn NY. Valborg followed the following year and they married in 1890.      Then, in 1898, he started his own business which exists to this day. By 1900 he had many decorative painting projects and forty to sixty men working for him, including many Scandinavian colleagues he had met during his journeyman days. He needed help so he invited his brother-in-law, Hendrick Olsen, to come over and be his superintendent. His reputation and projects took him north – to Rochester and Buffalo and Erie, south to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. and Florida, and west to Omaha. His style of decorating was drawn from his adaptation of the Book of Kells scrolls adding later Viking elements and employing devices developed during the "Art Nouveau” period. He was influenced by Byzantine Church Art often putting a “Pantocrator” in the apse, together with many church symbols integrated into the design. Another ongoing relationship was developed with the Warner brothers, who built a large chain of theatres in which Rambusch Decorating Company worked into the 1950's. After unsuccessfully trying to advise his clients on types of lighting, he started making his own units in 1908 to protect his murals and show them in the best light. This part of the firm has grown into the largest part of Rambusch today. Henry Swietek works in the tradition of the old itinerant painter-decorator going from job to job. He teamed up with Rambusch at least twice with the author. Rambusch's list of works in the Buffalo area is quite extensive. The old Cathedral which is now back in use, Shea Theatre Lighting, St. Peter's Cathedral, Erie, St. Gerard's, St. John the Evangelist, etc. 1924 at 65 years of age. His work lives on, now being restored in a series of projects here in the Northeast.

Partial reprint Lighting a Revolution National Museum of American History  (online April 2021) The availability of more powerful light bulbs made controlling the light they emitted a necessity. Fixture makers combined both art and science in electrical luminaires that provided optical control and fashionable design. A Danish immigrant, Frode Rambusch, started a business in New York in the 1890s designing murals and stained glass windows for public buildings. He soon expanded activities to make special lighting fixtures, incorporating artificial light into the architecture. Above is a Rambusch fixture designed in 1939 for church illumination.