Solon_&_Schemmel
Solon and Schemmel Tile Company
Former tile pottery business in San Jose, California
Solon and Schemmel Tile Company (S&S) was a tile pottery business in San Jose, California from 1920 – 1936. The company's tiles adorn Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco and the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Other projects included tiles for the Orpheum and Junior Orpheum theaters in Los Angeles, the Mark Hopkins Hotel, Central Classroom Building at San Jose State University, Y.M.C.A. buildings in San Diego and Honolulu, the Dollar Steamship Line building at Portland, Oregon, the Oakland and Berkeley war memorials.[1][2] and the Frank P. Williams House in Sacramento.[3] Their tiles were used by Helen Bell Bruton and her sister Margaret Bruton to create the Fleishhacker Zoo (currently San Francisco Zoo) Mother’s House mosaics. [4] The business was eventually subsumed into Stonelight Tile and is one of the only major California tile manufacturers from the 1920s to have survived to the present.[5][1]