About a month ago, I wrote about Martyn Owen, a filmmaker who was creating a mini-documentary about Nannau Hall, the Grade II* Georgian house that stands on the grounds where the Nannau Oak, featured in “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” once stood.
“Within the Walls: Nannau,” directed and edited by Martyn I. Owen and performed by Keith Evans, is done and you can watch it in full at the link. The film shows Nannau, in its current state, in desperate need of repair. Thanks to many incredible shots by drone operator Rob Whittey, you’re also able to get a real sense of Nannau and its surroundings, including places featured in “Cadi,” such as a lovely aerial shot of Dolgellau and close-ups of more distinct locations such as Coed y Moch lodge. The film also delves into more of the history and folklore of Nannau, exploring eerie and ghostly tales that live on to this day.
Martyn Owen, a filmmaker, has been working on a mini-documentary about Nannau Hall, a Grade II* Georgian house on the grounds where the Nannau Oak, featured in “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” once stood. Earlier this year, Nannau Hall received some attention after the Facebook page “Hidden and Forgotten Wales/England” shared some of Martyn’s photos, videos and stills. Why? Unfortunately, Nannau Hall is rapidly deteriorating.
Although the hall’s current state may be too costly to fix, Martyn hopes his documentary will help raise awareness. Here are some photos and stills to give you a sense of what Nannau Hall looks like today (and also what it may have looked like in the past). Also, “Cadi” made a visit as well!
You can also see a video of the interior of Nannau Hall by Martyn in this “North Wales Live” article. An article about the situation also appeared in “Wales Online” here. We’ll share more information about how to view the mini-documentary when we can.
A couple weeks ago, we received a call from Kathy Porter, daughter of Frank Joseph Anthe. Turns out Kathy is local, and she said she had a picture or two of her father. “Would we like to stop by to see them?” she asked.
Someday I’d love to share my day with Kathy, which was unexpected and so fun. But for now, I want to share these incredible photos, which were over and beyond what I expected.
Above is Kathy’s father, Frank Joseph Anthe, who was born 1901. Everyone in the family and various newspaper clippings say Frank Joseph Anthe took over Anthe Machine Works when was 15-years-old, when his father, Frank D. Anthe, died.
Frank D. Anthe died in 1919, so we assumed his son, Frank Joseph Anthe, took over, perhaps, a few years prior to his father’s death. According to a genealogist Kathy hired in the 1990s, Frank D. Anthe died “of a form of Bright’s Disease, caused by working with iron or lead”. Historically, “Bright’s disease” was used to classify a type of kidney disease, what we now call nephritis.
This genealogy report also included a copy of Frank D. Anthe’s will, written in 1918. In it, he wrote that he wished to give his business, located at 407 Madison Ave., Covington, Kentucky, to his children, and that he wished for his son to continue to operate it as the same. However, he also acknowledged that while he trusted his son to be “thoroughly competent” as he grew older, until his son was 21, he wished for the finances to be handled by executors and trustees, who were instructed, in the meantime, to compensate Frank Joseph Anthe for his work.
So in this picture (which we colorized), we have a teenager or possible early 20-something, whose father had died in 1919, and whose mother had died in 1914, tasked with keeping Anthe Machine Works up and running, the employees who worked there employed and his father’s legacy alive. And he did. Kathy says she remembers her father saying how kind and helpful many locals in the business community were as he transitioned from not just keeping the machines up and running, but also keeping the financials on track, too.
Here are two more early looks at the interior of Anthe Machine Works and its employees. These photos are undated, but Kathy’s dad is the one in the three-piece suit. She said he wore a three-piece to work every day.
Here’s a great shot of the front of Anthe Machine Works, which we also colorized. Again, undated.
Here we have two professionally taken photos that Kathy found tucked in an Anthe Machine Works catalog. One is a sampling of wood cutters made by Anthe and the other is a shot of longtime employee Vic, Kathy said.
“What’s Vic’s last name?” I asked, thinking about past research I had done.
“Schraivogel,” she said pronouncing the name emphatically. I gathered he was a longtime, loved employee.
And then I remembered – the 1975 obituary I found for Victor J. Schraivogel, 69, “a retired machinist for the Anthe Machine Works, Covington, where he was employed for 44 years,” the one I mentioned here. And now, we have this beautiful photo of him!
Kathy says many of her father’s employees worked at Anthe for years. He was a good dad, she said, so he probably was a good boss.
I’m throwing this photo in just because it’s fun. In a 1980 brochure called “Take a Tankquilizer,” there is an article titled, “CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Went The Street Car OOGA! OOGA! OOGA! Went The Horn.” The article says, “The operator of this #1 street car and some of the spectators on the side walk seem concerned. All but the driver of the car. He seems to have a good grip on the wheel and his sights set straight ahead. Any ideas of the place, time, and people involved? Submit information to TANK Marketing Department and receive your next ride on #1 or any other TANK route of your choice, ‘FREE.’”
I have no additional information to share except that’s the Anthe building in the background and the scene gives a wonderful sense of time and place, decades ago.
Speaking of the 1980s, here we have Donald Anthe posing in the same spot as his father did all those years ago.
And here’s what the interior of Anthe Machine Works looked like in 1987.
Editor’s note: Andy Glenn reports that he is working on the final edit of “Backwoods Chairs” before passing it along. It’ll be in our hands in Junewhen we’ll start the editing and layout process. “I’m excited, and more than a little relieved, for this to join the stable of upcoming LAP books,” he says. All the images in this post are from Andy’s visit to Randy Ogle’s The Chair Shop in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Randy’s a third-generation chairmaker, with a chair shop and gallery just off the Craft Loop road. Randy’s also one of the few makers Andy visited with a storefront and open hours, and Andy highly recommends a visit if you get a chance.
Chris and I first discussed this book a few years back – a book on the backwoods chairmaking tradition, one found deep in the hills and mountain communities of central Appalachia. It excited me – to search for and travel to working makers still engaged in the longstanding tradition of rural chairmaking. I had no idea who I’d find still at it. There are no networks or directories for this sort of thing.
I searched and traveled for makers over a couple-year stretch. Covid complicated things immensely at the beginning. I was already an outsider requesting visits and traveling from away. Now I was visiting their shops with the uncertainty of the virus swirling about. So things paused for half a year or so before traveling started in earnest.
Randy Ogle flexing a walnut chair slat into the bending form.
One aspect that made this project such an enjoyable riddle was that I had no idea who I’d find during the search. But I came across plenty of chairmakers (which took me to splendid rural chair shops in Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina) during this time to the point I needed to end the search and put the book together, or risk this thing never coming together in print.
I found that I needed to write immediately after a visit or my initial impressions would dull away. Details would muddle, smells would fade and I’d forget the punchline to the jokes told by the makers. No matter how thorough my note-taking, writings from a recalled visit didn’t share the same spark as a fresh experience. So I wrote immediately after traveling, sometimes through the night if I was visiting different makers on successive days.
The issue: I had no idea how the book fit together until after the search or how each visit would relate to the others.
The early writings weren’t chapters but more essay-like. In the best case, they were the primordial chapters. When I revisited an essay, sometimes a year after the visit, the vitality of the day would rush back. Later on, once completely finished with the search, the story arch became apparent and I could see how the independent puzzle pieces of essays fit together. That’s when the book began to take shape.
In the earliest days, I also wrote when considering an issue. The following was cut during the latest edit. Like many of the early essays, this doesn’t fit properly into the book. A few early writings were mercifully deleted (there’s nothing quite like the embarrassment that comes from reading your own bad writing), while plenty of others were adapted and absorbed into the final version.
I don’t remember what prompted the entry below, though I imagine it was in response to friends’ and acquaintances’ perplexed responses to hearing about this book. Most people responded with excitement. A few were so overwhelmingly baffled that they offered no follow-up. Just silence (I actually enjoy these responses very much). But, at times, there was a hint of dismissiveness about these chairs and the value of this book. The essay was likely written with that attitude in mind.
This survived the initial fiery purge of the “delete” button, and it doesn’t cause stomach pain or my face to turn bright red, so I thought it’d be fun to share here.
Randy’s method for putting the back assembly together. He cut the mortises flush to the cutout on the face of the back post. After inserting the slat, Randy twisted the post until the slat crossed the line running vertical from the chuck center of the drill press. He adjusts the post until the slat intersects the vertical line at the shoulder line where it will enter the opposing post.
A three-slat walnut chair with a seagrass seat from The Chair Shop. Early chairs from the family shop were woven with corn shuck.
I love the work of authors Wendell Berry and E. B. White. It is my hope that I subconsciously replicated their style and cadence. It is wholly doubtful I will achieve it, but still a resounding desire.
Their writing styles welcome the reader to share in their experiences through the combination of humor, neighborliness and the strength of their convictions. A running theme in their writings, though maybe more of an undercurrent than a theme really, is the respect each shows toward rural America*. Respect towards its people, their communities and the environment. Seldom explicit (though Berry does speak strongly in defense of rural America against the subjugated qualities of the big, market-based economy and the destructive policies of those in positions of power), the worth of each community member is inherently implied.
To mount a defense for the rural against the urban, either aloud or in writing, immediately puts the defender in the weaker position, and should only be done so when absolutely necessary. As it relates to chairmaking; beyond this, I do not intend to spend any time arguing the value and worth of backwoods chairs when compared to “sophisticated” work or dominant design trends. The worth of the backwoods is inherent, as much as any other place, people and creative work. Rural is only devalued if we choose to devalue it, and, unfortunately, why Mr. Berry must speak to its defense.
Within “Backwoods Chairs,” I follow the chairmaking tradition, rich as it is in the hills and mountains of central Appalachia, out of the rural communities and into larger cities, and even toward different regions when the story points elsewhere. Yet these chairs are most often found in rural areas for a reason; Appalachia has abundant timber for post-and-rung chairs, remote communities in need of seating, along with the low investment and overhead, all of which created an ideal environment for green wood chairmaking.
The beauty of the chair is found in its simple form, the local materials, and the maker’s skill. It’s a subtle chair, one that’s easy to overlook because of our familiarity with the form. But it’s a chair that supported generations of makers, attracts both artists and craftspeople towards its form, and is ripe for contemporary interpretations as the tradition pushes forward.
It’s a chair worth celebrating, along with the resiliency of the makers who continue on this path.
– Andy Glenn
*During their careers, both authors left their homes and opportunities within the city (both lived in New York City at one point) for a rural life. Berry moved toward a familial farmstead along the banks of the Kentucky River while White went northwards to a saltwater farm in coastal Maine.
Editor’s note: We hired local historian Heather Churchman of Covington Uncovered to research the Anthe family, whose company, Anthe Machine Works, occupied 407 Madison Ave. for decades. You can read more about the history of the building here. And if you would like to help fund the Anthe Building restoration project, there are more details here.
The Anthe family created a legacy in Covington that lasted from 1897, when Frank D. Anthe founded Anthe Machine Works, until 2019, when Frank’s great-grandchildren closed the company. Anthe was Covington’s second-oldest business when it closed.
Kentucky Post, August 29, 1905
Frank Anthe built the Anthe headquarters at 407 Madison Ave.— the building just acquired by Lost Art Press, which plans to establish its own multi-generational legacy there.
Frank was born in 1868. His parents, Joseph Anthe (1826-1890) and Maria Susanna Brandner Anthe (1826-1899), were born in Hallenberg, in the Hochsauerland district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Joseph’s occupation in 1870 was listed in the Covington City Directory as stove molder; in 1880, it was grocer.
Two years after Frank established his company, on Sept. 14, 1898, he married Clara Cecilia Greifenkamp (born in 1874). Flora was their first child, born in 1899, and Frank Joseph Anthe, the oldest son, was born in 1901. Frank and Clara’s three other boys—Elmer, Ralph and Arnold—died as young children.
Frank D. was one of the founders of the White Villa Church and Country Club in Northern Kentucky, about 18 miles south of Cincinnati. Along with his community-oriented lifestyle, Frank instilled a great work ethic and sense of entrepreneurship into his oldest son.
Frank died in 1919, leaving his oldest son to take over Anthe Machine Works at 15 years old. Clara had died in 1914. In some ways, the two elder Franks managed the easier days of the business.
Frank J. Anthe Sr., Kentucky Post, November 20, 1952. This photo was also used in an article that was published in 1933.
Frank Joseph would go on to marry Grace Hale. They had two sons, Frank Joseph, Jr. and Donald, and a daughter, Kathleen.
Frank Anthe Sr.’s Tudor-style home in Fort Mitchell, as it looks today. Photo by Heather Churchman.
Like his father before him, Frank Sr. was well known in the community: he was a founding member of Crestview Hills, Ky., and the city’s first mayor. The family lived in Fort Mitchell, in a Tudor-style home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After Frank Sr. died in 1963, Donald (Don) was the next Anthe in line to take over the business. He was 34 when he took over.
Don was used to going to the Anthe shop when he was a teenager, as he told The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983: “It was a real treat…I think [dad took us there] to get us out of my mother’s hair… but my father made us come down here every Saturday. He would take us out for lunch. We got to go to a pool hall for a sandwich and a Coke.”
Everyone called Don “The Captain.” His brother Frank Jr. was known as “Sonny.”
Frank “Sonny” graduated from Beechwood High School and he was a member of the school’s first football team in 1945. He attended Villa Madonna College.
Don also graduated from Beechwood High School in 1948. He served in the U.S. Marine Corp during the Korean War from 1949-1953. Before his father died, Don was working as a traveling salesman for Bauer and Black, an elastic supports company.
After he became President of Anthe Machine Works in 1964, Don designed the company’s woodcutting tools by hand. The tools were sold all over the world. Times were really, really good, until, as that 1983 interview mentions, recession hit.
Don said, “[In the early ’80s, when the home building industry suffered], the furniture business just plain stopped.”
Manufacturers stopped buying Anthe’s tools.
“I can tell you right now our business is off by 75 percent from what it was before the recession,” Don said in the interview.
At the time, they had a staff of five, down from 10, including Don’s brother Frank.
The Anthe building is second from the end, behind the “pad” sign. Photo by Walter E. Langsam, December 1982. National Register of Historic Places.
Owning the building their grandfather had built provided the brothers with peace of mind: “[The company has managed to avoid losses], but that’s because we own the building. When I don’t feel like paying myself rent—when there’s no way I can afford it—I don’t. If we had a big loan to make payments on, we’d have been out of business a long time ago.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 15, 1983. Photo by Gerry Wolter.
At the time of the 1983 interview, the Anthe Building still had a stairway covered in turquoise paint that Don and Frank had “slapped around as children.” There was even a partially full bottle of whiskey that their father Frank Joseph Sr. had left in a drawer.
After Don and Frank retired, Don’s sons Mark and Doug took over the business for its last years.
Frank Jr., aka Sonny, died in 2013. Don, the Captain, was with us until November 4, 2020. Don’s obituary said that, “when [Don] was at home he enjoyed working in his yard and then taking naps with his beloved dog Willie.”
Their legacy will and still lives on.
—Heather Churchman
Heather Churchman is a communications manager by day and an architecture-obsessed local historian by night. A passionate and curious spirit, she can often be found whispering sweet nothings to the buildings of Covington, Kentucky. Born in Oxford, Ohio, educated at Ohio University, and now a proud resident of #LoveTheCov, Heather is living proof that you can take the girl out of Ohio, but you can’t take Ohio out of the girl. Follow Heather’s explorations of local history and all the weird and wonderful things she uncovers along the way at Covington Uncovered on Instagram.
