Country Furniture with a Folksy Flair

 

QUESTION: I recently attended an auction in central Pennsylvania. Included in the many lots were several pieces of attractively painted furniture. I was particularly drawn to a couple of what I thought were blanket chests, decorated with folk art motifs. But when they came up for bid, the auctioneer called them bridal chests. I’d like to know more about type of painted furniture. What is the origin of folk-art painted furniture? 

ANSWER: Handpainted folk art furniture was highly influenced by cultural traditions brought to America by immigrants. 

The peak of handcrafted folk art painted furniture ran from the 1790s to the 1880s. There weren’t any real art schools and not all that many fine artists in the early 19th century. Many talented individuals became commercial painters and worked with special skill on furniture, signs and other useful objects.

From the 1870s on, Mennonites from Poland, Russia and Prussia settled in the Dakotas and Nebraska, bringing their tradition of grain painting on light wood with them. The Mennonites decorated large wardrobes, dowry chests, tables and sofas with these patterns, and also embellished furniture with small floral motifs from the old country.

English cabinetmakers who settled in many parts of the country helped spread the style for painted English neoclassical chairs based on the designs of George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton.

But the do-it-yourself idea, too, started early in the 19th century when young girls learned how to paint furniture and wooden boxes with watercolors. Cabinetmakers varnished the decorated pieces which featured landscapes, figures, fruits, animals, and flowers.

Itinerant painters and craftsmen lent their artistic expertise to the production of painted furniture pieces such as chairs, settees, armoires, cabinets, chests, benches, and other functional pieces. Many of these were European emigrants who brought many distinct regional styles and art forms to America.

By the early 20th Century, painted furniture began to have an impact on American culture and design. Classified as folk art or peasant art, these painted pieces became especially popular.

German immigrants used furniture painted in the German folk style, such as chairs, storage chests, tables, schranks, dressers, benches, and trunks. German folk furniture was utility-based, simple country furniture that remained significantly less influenced by the national and international design trends. Painter decorators drew inspiration from local tastes, preferences, history, culture, traditions, and heritage. Folk furniture was handmade using elaborate joints, often involving painting and carving to depict animals, scenes of daily life, geometric shapes, bears, and birds. Furniture makers used locally available woods like spruce, pine, beech, oak, birch, ash, and maple.

As elsewhere in Europe, national and international art trends targeted the wealthy. However, some elements filtered down to the provincial regions, influencing the works, skills, and tastes of local artisans. Since Germany had abundant forests, local artisans used a variety of woods to produce unique furniture.

Most of these pieces were distinctive of a particular region and period. Since Germany had a long and complicated history, the style and design of German folk furniture items varied depending on a piece's period and area of origin.

With the advent of the Renaissance in the early 16th-century, most European nations saw significant changes in the design and style of furniture. However, the cabinetmakers of provincial Germany remained largely unaffected by the Renaissance, producing unique Gothic-style furniture.

The Renaissance brought new forms of furniture, including the bridal trunk. Bridal trunks became a standard throughout Europe. The provincial German population would often personalized these bridal trunks with hand-painted designs.

Today, thanks to the popularity of painted furniture in antiques stores and the American trend for relocation, a piece from one section of the country may turn up in another.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "In the Good Ole Summertime" in the 2024 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Up to Snuff

 

QUESTION: I’ve been fascinated by antique snuff boxes for some time. Most are a bit above my budget, but I’d like to purchase one or two soon. However, I know little about snuff and the origins of these decorative little containers. When did people start taking snuff? And where and where were the first snuff boxes made?

ANSWER: Snuff was a type of smokeless tobacco made from finely ground or pulverized tobacco leaves. Users snorted or "sniffed" it into their nasal cavity by inhaling it lightly after placing a pinch of it either onto the back of their hand, by pinching some between their thumb and index finger, or holding a specially made "snuffing" device.

Friar Ramón Pane, a missionary who came to the New World with Christopher Columbus in 1493, was the first European to witness the inhaling of snuff by the Taino people of Haiti. Until then, tobacco was unknown to Europeans. But by the 1650s, artisans were making small boxes the snuff dry.

Traditional snuff production consisted of a lengthy, multi-step process, in tobacco snuff mills. The selected tobacco leaves were first cured or fermented, which gave it the  individual characteristics and flavor for each type of snuff blend. Many blends of snuff required months to years of special storage to reach the required maturity. Fine snuff consisted of varieties of blended tobacco leaves without the addition of scents. Varieties of spice, piquant, fruit, floral, and mentholated soon followed, either pure or in blends. 

Each snuff manufacturer usually had a variety of unique recipes and blends, as well as special recipes for individual customers. Common flavors also included coffee, chocolate, Bordeaux wine, honey, vanilla, cherry, orange, apricot, plum, camphor, cinnamon, rose and spearmint.

The 18th century witnessed an increase in the use of snuff, especially among the English and French aristocracy. Because it was a small, fine substance, it needed a vessel to contain it. Both snuff and the little boxes that contained it became important expressions of class. Originally made for daily use, snuff boxes became important symbols of personal representation. Snuff taking had become an important marker of social status.

Although men could ingest other forms of tobacco, both men and women could take snuff. Tobacco would often be used by men while socializing in coffeehouses, thus becoming linked to public masculinity.

Taking snuff could be unpleasant, especially if there were a crowd in a room. In the act of ingesting it, a person had to remain dignified. Society considered it rude for snuff takers to make excessive noise making or reaction. Like tea or coffee consumption at this time, it wasn’t only about the substance being ingested: but the ingestion itself that had to adhere to society’s rule.

The manufacture of snuff boxes became a lucrative industry when taking snuff was fashionable. Snuff boxes ranged from those made of horn to ornate designs featuring precious materials made using state-of-the-art techniques. Since prolonged exposure to air caused snuff to dry out and lose its quality, manufacturers designed snuff boxes to be airtight containers with strong hinges, generally large enough to hold a day's worth of snuff. The wealthy kept larger snuff containers, called mulls, on their dinner tables for use at dinner parties. These could be quite elaborate and often included rams horns decorated with silver or in some cases a depiction of the head of a ram.

In the early 18th century, French jewelers created snuff boxes of gold set with diamonds, amethysts, and sapphires. By 1740, specialized artisans took over the production of these ornate tabatières, which they engraved, chased, and enameled. 

The shapes of these boxes weren’t limited to rectangular boxes. Porcelain containers resembling little trunks were popular, as were ovals, but tabatières shaped like shells were more rare. And while the materials used to construct a box were often enough for its decoration, sometimes artisans hand painted these snuff boxes, depicting everything from miniature landscapes and bucolic scenes to tiny portraits or cameos of their owners.

Miniatures often adorned the lids of snuff boxes. These could be scenes from various mythological, Biblical, or pastoral settings, but portraiture was the most common decoration, especially on those boxes given as gifts. It was usually men who adorned the portraiture present on the jewelry of women.

Silver snuff boxes became associated with Sheffield, England, where silver-plating had been perfected on these small containers in the late 18th century. By the early 19th century, the silver industry had blossomed in Birmingham, England, where snuff box makers such as Samuel Pemberton, Nathaniel Mills, and Edward Smith produced oblong containers with images of castles and abbeys on their tops and sides.

Birmingham was also a center for papier-mâché snuff boxes, which manufacturers hardened using several layers of enamel. A market for these inexpensive boxes developed in the United States, so Birmingham box makers began decorating their wares with portraits of U.S. naval heroes and victory scenes from the War of 1812, often using engravings by such renowned American artists as Gilbert Stuart as their source material.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Art Deco World" in the 2024 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

What's All the Fanfare?

 

QUESTION: I was digging around in my mother’s attic the other day and discovered a flat box containing two very beautiful fans. I imagine these must have belonged to her mother or grandmother. What can you tell me about them? Do they have any value?

ANSWER: Fans have been around for a long time. As a piece of functional art, they go back as far as ancient Egypt. 

The Egyptians saw them as sacred instruments used in religious ceremonies. They also became a symbol of royal power. But it was the Chinese who evolved the fan into a complex, decorated instrument. The Japanese took the fan one step further and produced a folding version, supposedly based on the folding wings of a bat. When Marco Polo returned to Venice, he brought with him fans made of vellum, paper, swan skin with blades of gold, silver, and inlaid mother-of-pearl.

The original purpose of hand fans was to create a breeze, but they had many other uses. They could be used as protection against rain, as a tray for offering or receiving refreshments, and to hide bad teeth. European women would use fans to hide their faces during mass.

By the 18th century, the folding fan had come into its own in Paris. Delicately hand-painted floral motifs, on a structure of decorative sticks, came into common use. In fact, any wealthy lady worth her salt had to have fans as accessories to her wardrobe.

These wealthy women developed a whole language of salutations and signals around their fans. For instance, carrying a fan in the left hand signified "desirous of acquaintance" while allowing it to rest on the right cheek meant "yes" and on the left "no." Drawing a fan across the forehead meant "We are watched" and drawing a fan across the eyes meant "I am sorry." Opening a fan wide meant "wait for me."

Dropping a fan meant "We could be friends." If a lady fluttered her fan, it meant “I am married.” But if she placed the handle of her fan to her lips, it meant "kiss me."  An open fan held in the right hand in front of the face—the ultimate form of seduction— meant "follow me"

The blades of these delicate instruments could be of carved ivory or tortoise shell inlaid with precious inlaid metals and elaborate jewels. Less expensive fan sticks were usually of sandalwood or fruitwood. These rococo fans were the finest ever made, and many fo the designs took the form of stylized art.

By the latter part of the 18th century, fans had gained popularity as a fashion accessory in the upper circles of American society. While fan makers imported finer sticks, they made their own wooden ones.

The earliest fans made in any large quantity in the United States were paper souvenir fans depicting historical scenes. as well as current events. Lithographers portrayed views of New York's Crystal Palace, 1853, the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, printed in black on a cream background, and the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

By the late 19th century, fans displayed images of nearly every product. Every department store and every manufacturer advertised on fans, including such products as coffee, milk, bread, carpet sweepers, restaurants, cafes, theaters, sewing machines, etc. 

Before the advent of air-conditioning, funeral parlors gave out fans t mourners. These were as much to keep mourners cooler in warm weather as they were to wave the stink of the corpse away. These mourning fans became a social necessity. Manufacturers often fashioned them in black materials to coincide with the black clothing worn during recognized periods of mourning. Of course, it didn't hurt to print the name and address of the mortician on the guards of a cheap wood fan.

Fans are still relatively inexpensive—except the jewel-encrusted ones—so they’re ideal to collect, especially for the novice collector. Many sell for $5-$20 online. Some of the most sought after fans came from the E.S. Hunt Company, later called the Allen Fan Company. In 1868, Hunt patented the process by which he assembled the fan sticks and the fan leaf in one step. This included folding or creasing and gluing the leaf to the fan sticks at the same time under pressure. This was America's first fan to appear and unfortunately folded, like its fans, in1910.  

Serious fan collectors often prize the simpler fans with printed leaves and plain sticks and guards. Many of these simpler folding fans provide a glimpse of particular times in history. Some once served as records of special occasions, such as births and marriages. Often fans celebrated military and naval victories. And some did the same for national holidays. Collectors find such a quantity of fans that many specialize in one particular subject, such as advertising fans. Unlike many other delicate antiques and collectibles, folding fans have survived for decades and often centuries in superb condition. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Art Deco World" in the 2024 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.