 Hi everybody, welcome to Barn's Takeout. I'm Robin Creeran, Collections Research Coordinator at the Barn Foundation. Today I'm going to talk to you about this chest on the east wall of room 14. So it's a Pennsylvania German chest from around the 18th century. We don't know the exact date of creation, but because of some of these stylistic pieces, parts of this chest, we believe it's from the 18th century. So Pennsylvania German chests, they're sometimes called blanket chests or dowry chests. They served a few different functions in a Pennsylvania German household. They were usually created for a particular person to hold their specific belongings like clothing. They could hold something of more value, which is why you see the lock in the center of the chest. But they also could serve as seating. So this particular piece does not have any decoration on the top, but they often did and sometimes you would see wear on them. Like I said, that's really just an indication of the fact that they were really these functional pieces within the home, which is sometimes hard to remember when we're in the gallery and we see these things in this much more art related context. So we forget that they were functional pieces before Dr. Barnes purchased them and put them into the Barnes Foundation. So this particular chest is actually has this applied wood front. So these arches are not painted. It's not painted to look like this. This is actually a piece of wood that was applied to the front of the chest itself. Normally you would see this kind of dovetail construction right here and we'll see it right here a little bit closer in. And there would have been the person constructing it would have used these dovetails for the four sides to all connect to one another. And then they would have put like a wedge in to create to make sure that the dovetails were nice and tight. They also used wooden pegs or pins, but usually not nails. And the construction itself, like how it would have been constructed like these dovetails were usually quite apparent. But because this one has this applied wood front that dovetail construction is actually hidden. So you can actually see the front right here on the left hand side with the applied piece. So, because this one has this applied wood it differs a little bit from some of the others in our collection. It's not painted like I said. So it gives it a bit more of a three dimensional look. And the two rounded arches and then that OG arch in the center. It's that OG is that kind of, that strange design at the top though the way that it kind of almost frames that center lock askeption. So these two, it's got two symmetrical sides to one center arch, which kind of helps to frame that center arch. The fields of these arches in German construction may have been constructed with in Tarja, floral in Tarja. Tarja is a type of marketry. So this type of inlaid wood. So these flowers would have been constructed with wood inlaid rather than with the paint that we see here. So this painted construction or these painted flowers can kind of be seen as like a less expensive kind of innovative approach to trying to mimic this style that we see in German construction from this time period. As I said, it was created in about the 18th century. It is similar to other chests from that time period that have these ball feet and a supplied wood front. We don't know the exact date of construction though. It would have been created for a particular person in this case, Christina Ernstin. The inn at the end of her last name is the feminization. So her name would have actually been Ernst. And that backwards ends, we don't know why those are there. They're probably just the personal style of the person who wrote them. It's kind of just an idiosyncratic motif, I guess. But the rest of the decoration is quite symmetrical. Although the flowers might be slightly different on either side, they're using the same kind of colors or at the very bottom, those little flowers kind of near the mounted earth on either side, different colors, but similar flowers. So the decorator would have probably been using stencils or templates to create these. If you notice, they look quite neat. They don't look as if they were done particularly by hand. So the type of decoration, the paint that they were using dried quite quickly. So they had to really plan things out to make sure that they finished before that paint actually dried. So this applied wood front and the ball feet, like I said, come from the German construction. So Pennsylvania Germans immigrated to the United States from German speaking countries like Switzerland or Southern Germany. And they brought with them this kind of style of, these different styles of art and furniture making and construction. And this type of these ball feet and this applied wood front, they were common in Germany during this time period. The ball feet were quite popular in the 16th century and well into the 19th as well. But what's interesting about the feet and kind of this chest in general is that it doesn't really look like an English construction, like an English furniture. So it shows that the Pennsylvania Germans were really adhering to where they came from and they were not really taking on much from their English counterparts despite having moved to an English colony or to a new country if they came after America was formed. So they show this kind of this adherence to the traditions brought from Germany, but we do see some changes like with the paint rather than the intarsia. And that shows that they had to change based on where they lived and what they had and what was available to them in the new country. And what kind of skill maybe the workers who were working here had, maybe they didn't have the skill or the means to be able to create this inlaid wood. So they did it in a less expensive way so that they could have a higher end furniture piece but made in a less expensive way for them in the new world, in the new place where they lived. So I encourage you the next time that you come to the Barnes Foundation to take a closer look at some of these chests, maybe look for some of them that don't have an applied wood front so that you can see that dovetail construction and just take a look at some of the details of them. And remember just how old they are and how well-made they are that they still are sitting in the Barnes Foundation today. So I hope that you enjoyed today's takeout. That's all for today. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. And if you would like to hear more of these, please subscribe to our channel. Thank you. 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