Welcome to the Certain-teed Pages! This is the second American Art Archives segment dedicated to a single advertiser and its artists.

George M. Brown founded the General Roofing Manufacturing Company in E. St. Louis in 1904. The name was changed to Certain-teed Products in 1917. Certain-teed still makes roofing, insulation, pipe, vinyl siding, fencing, and more, just as they did when Herbert Paus painted the company's ads. The Paus campaign was an expensive one, costing $500,000 in 1920s dollars (adjusted, that would be over $5 million today).

Herbert Paus did the vast majority of Certain-teed ads from 1925-1929 (though I did find one done by Franklin Booth which I'll add eventually). A spokeswoman for the company, Kathy MacMurray, contacted me in August 2004 to provide some background on Certain-teed (which appears in the text of this page) and to send the Archives more ads to scan and restore (thank you, Kathy). Certain-teed should do a Paus calendar in the future; I think it would be a big hit. On a sad note, the company has none of the original Paus artwork, which could mean, as it does for so much illustration work, that it no longer exists.

Postscript. Certain-teed was acquired by Saint-Gobain Corporation in 1988. Saint-Gobain is a venerable French firm with an illustrious history of glass-making (founded 1664, it made the mirrors in Versailles). Today, Certainteed is headquartered in Valley Forge, PA.
Visit them at: www.certainteed.com.

NOTE: as usual for all scans found on the American Art Archives site, these are copyright American Art Archives and may not be used for any other purpose without written permission from American Art Archives. These scans are not in the public domain.