The PA Dutch ‘Grossa Schrank’ that brought $1M
In studying early American folk art, there is no shortage of folk art documents and designs that express pioneer immigrants’ gratitude for reaching America at a time when many individuals still feared the world was flat, or worse, that dragons still lurked in the troubled ocean currents to tend their lives. Crossing the vast Atlantic Ocean at the mercy of a Sea captain’s nautical skill, thousands of Europeans expressed their faith in God, and thereby gratitude for their safe crossing once they set foot on the ground of the New World. Perhaps, because of this, there were no more religious believers than the PA Dutch immigrants who saw in Penn’s Colony his promised, “Land of Milk and Honey” that these war-ravaged European farmers desperately sought, by which creating one of the nation’s most successful farming Commonwealths.
Within the field of this American folk art, the Pennsylvania German dower chest is considered one of our Nation’s most outstanding Americana achievements. Combining the art techniques of the Old World with the embodiment of free world symbols and ideas, these pioneer hope chests were to be the imagined fulfillment of a people out to seek their fortune in a new, wonderful, and exciting land. Numerous folklorists have attempted to trace certain Pennsylvania Dutch Folk art dower chest designs to their original folk artists living in southeastern Pennsylvania for a number of years now, but the mysterious black unicorn decorated chests, for example, have been determined to be made in Bern Township, Berks County, according to an article by Patricia J. Keller in the October 1991 issue of ANTIQUES magazine. These mythological art forms have also been recorded on birth and baptismal fraktur documents and are the most sought after dower chest specimens by National museums.
But perhaps the most accessibly valuable piece of Americana furniture is the Pennsylvania Dutch Wardrobe, Shrank, or Kas. America’s most prestigious national museums have competed with each other to build an inventory of classic American works of art displaying 18th Century folk art furniture that best describes the unique life of ethnic American citizens in their early American period.
Every ethnic immigrant group who had come to the New World for life, liberty, and happiness each created unique household furniture that represented the love of generations of their ethnic peers. One can only imagine the creative individuality of immigrant craftsmen who in seeking to please wedding couples and parents have designed furniture and craft pieces that they alone did not believe themselves possible of created in a New World.
Displayed among the best artistic achievements of the Pennsylvania Dutch people, these Alsatian Colonial wardrobes known as a “Schranks” in the Dutch dialect and paint-decorated dower chests, specifically those fine, unique examples attributed to John Bieber, a French Huguenot descendant, of Berks County. His unique joinery craftsmanship along with his father, Jacob’s of their crown moldings are identical to those fashioned throughout the historic 1783 David Hottenstein Georgian mansion, just east of Kutztown on route 222, where Jacob Bieber and sons, including John, are likely its master craftsman.
One of the nation’s most prominent Lancaster County antique collectors, Richard Flanders Smith, possessed an outstanding wedding wardrobe made for Philip Deturk in 1775 that Deturk and his wife, Esther Shenkel used on the Oley Valley farm of his father, John Deturk near the village of Oley. Born in 1757, Philip Deturk was eighteen years of age when he or more likely his father ordered this colorful sponge-decorated Schrank from the talented cabinet makers, Jacob and John Bieber, two immigrant French Huguenot Dutchman neighbors who also shared the same religion as the Isaac Deturk family. As well as their prominent neighbors: the Levans, Keims, DeBenneville, and Bertolet farmers.
Eugene P. Deturk , founder of the Deturk Paint and Hardware Store in Kutztown, father, William was born on the original Isaac Deturk homestead, near the village of Oley, where the famous Philip Deturk 1775 paint-decorated wardrobe was used by the Deturk family. Although many of the immigrant farmers in the Oley Valley were French Huguenot, it is not by chance the Deturk family sought the talented Jacob and John Bieber, folk artists near Lobachsville, to create the exceptional folk art decorated pioneer furniture for them and many other Huguenot families in the Oley Hills. Since they had a sawmill on their farm near more present Tritown park, there was no shortage of lumber. However, with the death of Richard Smith’s wife, Joanne, the fabulous folk art collection of the Smith estate sold at Pook and Pook Auction Gallery on October 30th, 2010, to an eager crowd and gave the fortunate enough in attendance one last look at the magnificent Philip Deturk Schrank/ wardrobe. Uniquely paint-decorated by the Biebers of Lobachsville, this piece was a combination of carpentry excellence and early American artistry when families cared enough to buy their children a wedding gift that had no equal. Dated 1775, the polychromatic Deturk “Schrank” done in the Bieber technique would have been built by Jacob Bieber, Sr.
According to another researcher, Jonathan P. Cox at the Univ¬ersity of Delaware in 1982, traced the popular Alsatian twin flat heart designed dower chests to this father and son wood craftsmen, Jacob and John Bieber. And in these last 35 years, the Bieber folk art twin heart motifs have been considered very much desired examples, rivaling any of early Americana Pennsylvania Dutch folk artistry, including the aforementioned fabled unicorns as their folk art utilized compass techniques and geometric shapes. But among the various schools of known Pennsylvania German folk artists in southeastern Pennsylvania, ironically, very little was known about Jacob and John Bieber from Berks and Lehigh Counties. As Heinrich Otto, Christian Seltzer, and Johan Rank, their distinctive Colonial Pennsylvania Dutch dower chest motifs have been identified as a definite school of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art among the Nation’s most prestigious museums that feature Americana collections including Philadelphia and Atlanta’s High Museum.
Cox, who studied the idiosyncratic skills and techniques used in a number of Bieber dower chests, was of the belief that this French Huguenot family followed the two-heart motif, popular among Alsatians on the Continent. When the widow of Jacob Bieber, Sr. died in Salisbury Township, it was possible another extravagant, this being the 1792 Jacob Bieber wardrobe or Schrank, was acquired by one of the children still living in the Oley Valley. Most likely it would have been her son, Jacob Bieber Jr., who had married Nicholas Lesher’s daughter, Esther in 1786, and operated the Bieber homestead where the sawmill was located in Oley Township, when father Jacob Sr. and brother, John moved to Salisbury Township, Lehigh County.
With this discovery and corresponding thesis, the fatherson team of wood craftsmen were celebrated into National prominence long after their deaths of the academic community when this fellow 1792 polychromatic Colonial wardrobe of Jacob Bieber was debuted at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Tercentenary Exposition. Titled, “Celebrating Pennsylvania German Arts (1683-1850),” this prestigious event was held in the city of Philadelphia during the 19821983 winter season. In conjunction with the exposition, the Philadelphia Museum of Art also displayed one of the most outstanding examples of John Bieber’s folk art decorated dower chests made for Magdalena Leibensperger, a girl who resided in Weisenberg Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. But of all 18th Century dower chest specimens, John’s prized Pennsylvania Dutch motif of bulbous flat hearts are sought here and abroad by major museums to acquire a chest by this French Huguenot Pennsylvania Dutch team.
As many pioneer farmers, John pursued wood-working as an avocation and became a very proficient joiner making furniture for his Oley Valley neighbors, such as these dower chests and even large Colonial wardrobes accurately called in the local PA Dutch Dialect “Grossa Schranks,” or referred to in the antique world as a Kas (from the Hudson Valley Dutch) for Oley Valley stone homes did not have adequate closet space. The earliest dated John Bieber dower chest, known to the author, was one he made for Estehr (Esther) Berdolet in 1775 that was decorated with a central flat heart centered below the keyhole and flanked by a large barn star or hex sign on either side, while an early example of father, Jacob’s, can be found at the Lehigh County Historical Society, dated 1763. To be continued