Mahantongo Valley Pennsylvania
Some of the most distinctive and elaborately decorated furniture created in early nineteenth century America originated in what is known as the Mahantongo or Schwaben Creek Valley of central Pennsylvania. Today, this body of work constitutes highly revered Pennsylvania German material culture. The majority of which can only be found in major museum collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.
Located roughly 25 miles north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania nestled within the ridge and valley province of Northumberland and Schuylkill Counties, the Schwaben Creek flows through this rural enclave between Mahantongo and Line mountains. The craftsmen and farmers of Germanic decent settled in this geographically isolated pocket, made up communities, which created this unique regional paint-decorated furniture.
Identified examples created in this region encompass a wide variety of domestic forms, including slant-top desks, blanket chests, chests of drawers, cupboards and hanging cupboards. A small body of turned and decorated woodenware also exists including spice cups and sugar bowls. Vibrantly decorated figural motifs depicting angels, praying children as well as birds, horses, deer, geometric and floral designs, urns, stars, and rosettes are seen on paint-decorated furniture from this small rural area. Many of these motifs were inspired by such designs seen on printed taufscheine (baptismal certificates) popular within Lutheran and German Reformed communities. Much of the decoration is thought to witness symbolic and religious significance.(1)
Around seventy-five pieces of furniture constructed of tulip poplar and pine are associated as having been made in the Mahantongo or Schwaben Creek Valley. The majority was made during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. One of the most well known is the Jacob Masser (1812 to 1895) slant-top desk dated 1834. Decorated on a green painted ground with two red horses, a multi-colored tree, yellow and red birds on its slant-lid, birds and trees along with geometric designs on drawer fronts and outlining stamp-printed rosettes, the desk stands on turned Sheraton-style feet. Its sunken side panel corners bear multi-colored quarter fans reflecting a neoclassical construct. As with much of this distinct furniture each piece consists of cross-cultural influences in construction methods and decorative devices. In 1926 dealer A.H. Rice offered a group of eleven pieces of Mahantongo Valley furniture, including this desk for $7,300. As advertised in the December 1926 issue of The Magazine Antiques, if not sold as a group, they would be broken up individually, which is what happened. Several of the pieces had been exhibited in the Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, which also took place in 1926.(2)
One of the first historical perspectives published on this subject occurred in 1973. In 1987, the definitive work was published entitled, Decorated Furniture of the Mahantongo Valley by Henry Reed. Recent scholarship, though unsubstantiated, states the original base color on much of the furniture produced from the area was not green but a turquoise or blue. It is believed that with varnish the coloration yellowed over time to turn into the distinct green as seen today.
Differing styles of construction suggest the work of various cabinetmakers. Multiple styles of paint decoration also suggest various hands were involved in embellishing the furniture. Several examples bear dates and signatures of their makers or who the piece was made for. Also through research and stylistic comparison, particular craftsman and decorators have been discovered.
What were once gifts to a young boy or girl coming of age created in a culturally unique isolated community are today incredibly valuable “American Folk Art”. The auction record for a piece of Mahantongo Valley furniture stands at $295,500 for a green paint-decorated blanket chest with praying children on front sold at Sotheby’s in 2002. At the same sale, a hanging cupboard with typical stamp rosettes along border, two lower drawers and a four-pane glass door sold for $53,775. Pieces have sold for more privately, particularly chests of drawers, selling in the area of $400,000. With exuberantly paint-decorated furniture established in the bedrock of the folk art market, interest in pieces from the well-chronicled regional Mahantongo or Schwaben Creek Valley will not likely fade any time soon.
Reference note by p4A Contributing Editor Karl Pass.
(1) Henry Reed, Decorated Furniture of the Mahantongo Valley, (Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University, 1987), page 55.
(2) Reed, page 28.
Bibliography Reference:
Foreman, Benno. German Influences in Pennsylvania Furniture in Arts of the Pennsylvania Germans, edited by Catherine Hutchins, pages 102-170. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1983.
Weiser, Frederick. and Mary-Hammond Sullivan. Decorated Furniture of the Mahantongo Valley. The Magazine Antiques, May 1973, pages 932-939.