 Welcome to Barn's Takeout, your daily serving of art. I'm Robin Creeran, Collections Research Coordinator at the Barn Foundation. Today I'm going to talk to you about this Pennsylvania German cupboard at the middle of this ensemble. I may be familiar to you because I talked a bit about one of the glass pieces in the right-hand corner, but today we'll focus our attention just on this piece. So this Pennsylvania German cupboard was created in the Mott and Dango Valley, which is an area about 85 miles northwest of Philadelphia, about a two-hour drive now, but in the 18th, 19th century would have been rather isolated and apart from the happenings that were going on in Philadelphia. The area was mostly tied together by church membership, and because of this there was a regional style that developed, and this is one example of that. So this piece was created by the workshop of Michael Brown. He was a cabinet maker who created a lot of pieces in the area and was responsible for quite a bit of what we see today of the Mott and Dango Valley. He was born in 1772 and died in 1851. He and his wife, Katarina, had nine children. One of them, John, who was born in 1808, joined his father in the business of cabinet making and carpentry, and one of their daughters, Rebecca Brown. She was born in 1796, and she was the owner of this piece. And we know this because her name is inscribed at the front of the piece. Also with the year 1828, likely the year it was either given to her or made for her, and she would have been 32 at the time, so a bit more established. So this piece would have been for a more established household, and it's a kitchen cupboard. So it would have been used to store things like Pennsylvania German redware, pottery, and other fine pieces of kitchenware or serving utensils, and they would have all been displayed in these glazed panels right here. But it also could have been used to store some more valuable things, which may be why there are locks on each drawer and locks on each of the doors. This piece is made of pine, which was a wood that was readily available to them in the region. They would not have been shipping anything in because, like I said, it was a very isolated area, so they were working with what they had. They were also working with similar material to what their German counterparts were using. Most Pennsylvania Germans came from different areas, but a large portion of the German-speaking people came from southern Germany. And this kind of style of painting wood and using pine or poplar, which was what was available in the south of Germany, indicates, shows that these people were using, were bringing this style over. This piece was made with pine, which was a type of wood readily available to them in the area, but also something that their German counterparts were using. A vast majority of the German-speaking people who came to America at this time and settled in the Philadelphia area were from southern Germany. And southern Germany was known for painting their wood and for using similar materials like pine or poplar, and that's because that was what they had in the south of Germany as well. So here the pine is painted, probably to cover up any knots or the actual look of the wood. And so they're using paint and they rather than have this reddish brown color throughout, they're adding some patterning to it. So these like triangular sweeping designs here and these dots, you'll see that mimicked and repeated throughout the piece. And then even on the side, if you can see just a little bit, you might see these little heart shapes here. And then if we go up to the top right here, there's a little bit more of a diamond shape. So it's again just to kind of create some patterning within the piece. But then also they're using paint to mimic what could have been molding or framing with wood. So this blue that frames these doors, that might have been a more elaborate framing device with wood, but here they're using paint, which is a little bit more simple and easier to create. And then also below on these doors and drawers, they're creating this interesting pattern right here. And then up top these rosettes show that they were also using stencils and stamps to create these and templates to create these designs so that they were able to duplicate them multiple times and create more of a uniform look. So the rosettes could have been used, could have been made with stamps. Often they used corks. And then they might have framed it with a circle created by a compass. These are a little bit less uniform, so they may have been drawn along the outline of the rosette. But these stars at the bottom are a bit more uniform. The six pointed stars, sometimes called hex signs. This circle looks quite a bit more uniform, so it was probably created by a compass. And then these little patterns of the stars were probably created with a ruler. And these ones are quite a bit more even. But possibly the most elaborate part of the design are the angels at the bottom. We know that they come from a broad side of a poem called Concordia. So it's a printed poster, essentially, of a poem. And we know this because there is a similar piece at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Very similar in design and construction with the same angels, a little bit drawn a slightly different way, painted a slightly different way, but look very similar. And they also include the words Concordia from the poem. That piece is also attributed to the workshop of Michael Brown. And it shows that the decorator of this piece was probably looking at a printed source. So much of the decoration on these painted chests and cupboards could have been created by fracture artists themselves, which may be why we see similar patterns. But in the case of this, it was probably because the decorator was actually just looking at printed sources, at printed fracture, to find their designs and to decorate with. Another place you might see some of these designs, like these hexines, are on the barns of Berks County. This points to the fact that a lot of motifs and patterns were repeated among different media within Pennsylvania German art and painting. I hope I sparked your interest in Pennsylvania German art and decorative arts. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel to get more daily servings of art. Feel free to leave a comment below. We love to hear from you. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.