Anthony and Elizabeth Iarrobino, Marblehead, MA Artists

Anthony (Tony) Iarrobino (1913-2006) and Elizabeth (Betty) Iarrobino (1915-2009) met at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston while students there in the mid to late 1930s. A few years after graduating, the couple married in 1941, settling in the coastal town of Marblehead, north of Boston. They went on to have two children, Anthony Jr. and Paul. Tony worked at Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Co. (Chelsea, Massachusetts) for most of his career, until he cofounded the printing-lithography company Uni-Graphic, Inc., in 1981. When the couple’s boys got older Betty returned to Salem State college and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, for a teaching qualification; she then taught studio art, design, and ceramics from 1970 to 1985 at Lasell Junior College, now Lasell University.

Both Tony and Betty continued to pursue their own artistic work. Betty joined the Folly Cove Designers in 1948. The group was a Gloucester, Massachusetts-based printmaking collective founded in 1941 by children’s book author/illustrator, Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios. The Folly Cove Designers were a juried group, modeled after medieval guilds and they primarily printed their designs on fabric in the form of clothing and housewares. The group achieved acclaim after features in national publications such as a 1945 article in Life, and had business contracts with major retailers such as Lord & Taylor and F. Schumacher; and the group participated in seminal craft exhibitions.

Tony joined Betty in the Folly Cove Designers, becoming one of the few male members of the group. The Iarrobinos were members through the early 1960s. Tony was also a portraiture, landscape, and abstract artist. He taught private and group classes in life drawing and portraiture at Marblehead Arts Association and his home studio. In 1975 he began collograph printing, and established himself in the medium, becoming a member of the Sandy Pond Printmakers. Betty taught design and art at Lasell Junior College from 1970 to 1985, and also worked in clay and fiber arts. In addition to the Folly Cove Designers, Tony and Betty were active in the Marblehead Arts Association, helping in various ways, including hanging the first Marblehead Arts Festival painting exhibit. They were also founding members of the cooperative Art Guild Gallery in Marblehead.

Although sharing interests in the theater, ballet, bird watching, and the ocean/nature and thus having similar subject matter in some of their designs, the two had different styles.[i]  Betty’s FCD emphasized patterns found in nature, including Turtles, Migration, Butterflies, while Tony’s Beach Ballet showed great attention to detail, as well as his skill in portraiture and figurative work. Tony’s design Sails is more graphic, closer in style to Betty’s work.

The Iarrobinos had mutual respect for one another’s art and although they may not have worked together or collaborated per se, they were sounding boards for one another. When interviewed in 1991, Anthony referred to his wife as “my best critic.”[ii]

View some of their work below and visit their individual pages for more examples.

 [i] Interests (Anthony A. Iarrobino eulogy, written and presented by Anthony Iarrobino, Jr., March 2006, collection of the Iarrobino family); Anthony and Elizabeth Iarrobino, interview by Theodora Martin, The Folly Cove Designers Collection, Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

 [ii] Anthony and Elizabeth Iarrobino, interview by Martin.