The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, has acquired the outstanding fraktur collection Joy and David Brocklebank. Having focused on western Pennsylvania fraktur for 38 years, the Brocklebanks' collection consists of more than 200 hand-drawn and printed fraktur from Westmoreland County and other western Pennsylvania counties. It was assembled by a dedicated scholar who was interested in the artistry and genealogy of these works on paper. First published by the Brocklebank's daughter in "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Fraktur, An Initial Survey" in The Magazine ANTIQUES in 1986, the collection has grown substantially and was featured in the 2007 exhibition at The Westermoreland titled "Made in Pennsylvania: A Folk Art Tradition."
Judith H. O'Toole, Director/CEO, states, "The acquisition of this major collection of western Pennsylvania fraktur strengthens The Westmoreland's already significant regional folk art collection, which contains important examples of furniture including painted furniture from Soap Hollow, textiles including samplers and coverlets, redware and decorated stoneware, and paintings."
The fraktur tradition in western Pennsylvania flourished primarily in Westmoreland County for more than one hundred years, where nine artists have been identified by surviving work dated as early as 1788. The collection also contains fraktur from Allegheny, Bedford, Indiana, McKean, Somerset, and Washington counties. The Brocklebank fraktur join more than a dozen important Westmoreland County fraktur collected by the Museum since its founding in 1959, making the Westmoreland's collection of western Pennsylvania fraktur the most important public or private collection known.
The work fraktur comes from the Latin word meaning "broken" - the same as our word "fracture." From an article in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition, "Made In Pennsylvania: A Folk Art Tradition," by R. David Brocklebank and Barbara L. Jones, comes this definition of the word fraktur, "The term is used today to describe a wide variety of Pennsylvania German folk-art documents. For the present purposes, embellishment "beyond necessity" seems to be an adequate definition of folk art." They continue, "The work fraktur has its origin in the presentation of text in discrete letters as opposed to a cursive hand. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the vast influx of immigrants from what is now Germany and Switzerland brought the tradition to Pennsylvania, where it underwent considerable evolution. Schoolteachers in the rural areas made a very large percentage of the fraktur that survives today."
Most early fraktur were executed by hand, while printed text became increasingly common in later examples. Typical artistic motifs in fraktur include birds, hearts, and tulips. Schoolmasters made fraktur early in the history of American fraktur, from around 1750 to 1820, whereas professional scriveners using printed forms dominated the fraktur market from about 1810 to 1900. However, there are considerable overlaps in these dates.
"The most common form of fraktur," say Brocklebank and Jones, "consists of birth and baptismal records (geburts and taufschein - often simply referred to as taufschein) - essentially serious religious pieces with colorful, exuberant additions to delight the eye." "House blessings (haus segen), writing examples (vorschriften), and narratives (such as the parable of the prodigal son) are also included among the many varieties of fraktur that one encounters in Pennsylvania. Typically created with ink and watercolor on paper, most of these documents are approximately sixteen by thirteen inches."
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