(Below is a paragraph that ended up on the cutting room floor of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”)
When describing the furniture of necessity, I avoid negative sentence constructions such as: It’s not ornate. That sentence tells you what the furniture is not; it doesn’t tell you what it is.
To put it a different way, my best friend in high school once described my girlfriend as “not horse-faced.”
It’s a struggle to find a good word that doesn’t make the furniture sound like stuff at a craft fair (“They are simple things”) or something dreamed up by an intellectual jackass (“It is the intersection between the laconic and the cardinal”).
The best description I can muster is the Italian word puro as it was used to describe paintings and literature in the classical and Renaissance periods. The literal translation is “pure,” but when used in criticism it means something more like “plain and clear.”
In late October 1716 Jacob Arend, a journeyman cabinetmaker, was 28 years old and at a crossroads. He and his fellow journeyman, Johannes Witthalm, had recently finished work on a writing cabinet. They both worked for Servacius Arend, Jacob’s older brother and the cabinetmaker to the court of Würzburg in Germany. The writing cabinet was a masterpiece but Jacob felt the need to write a letter and conceal it in the cabinet. He made sure it would not be easily found and he was very successful in this endeavor. The letter was not found until December 1967 and it wasn’t until 2014 that the letter was translated and studied.
City of Würzburg
Before examining the letter let’s take a look at the last piece Jacob and Johannes made in the Würzburg workshop. The writing cabinet is a Baroque behemouth bursting with curved surfaces and marquetry. The cabinet is almost 71 inches high (180 cm), 65 inches wide (165 cm) and the depth is almost 31 inches (78 cm). It appears to be in three pieces but is actually in two pieces. The writing cabinet was made for Jacob Gallus von Hohlach. The double doors of the top section bear von Holhlach’s arms and the writing flap his cypher — JEALUS JACOB.
Cabinet with writing flap open.
The carcase is pine with veneering in walnut. Marquetry woods are burr walnut, sycamore, tulipwood, boxwood, ebonized and stained woods; other materials include ivory, bone, turtle shell, pewter and brass. The cypher of von Hohlach is laid into snakewood. The drawers are lined with embossed decorative papers; cupboards are lined with red silk.
Marquetry of Jacob Gallus von Hohlach’s arms.
Some time after the writing cabinet was finished Jacob Arend wrote his letter filling both sides of one piece of paper. The letter was put in a recess under the lower right hand drawer; the drawer can be seen when the writing flap is open. Secret compartments were not a novelty in 18th-century furniture but Jacob took the additional measure of gluing down the two pieces of wood that protected his hiding place.
Left: the base of the lower right-hand drawer. Right: the hiding place.
The writing cabinet and Jacob’s letter are in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. This translation is provided by the V&A.
“This cabinet was made by Jacob Arend of Koblenz and Johannes Witthalm of Vienna, who are at present journeymen cabinetmakers in the service of Master Servacius Arend, court cabinetmaker in Würzburg. It was made in the year 1716, when cabbage and peas often were the best meal we could obtain. As a result we have grown so fat that we can hardly climb the stairs any more, but meat has been in very short supply for us, God pity us. There was seldom warm bread in our kitchen, but the wine has always tasted good; when we have earned one week’s wage, two have already been drunk, for wine has become dear this year with the vintage having been poor the last four years. This year there has also been a great war in Hungary against the Turks.”
On the back of the page:
“I, Jacob Arend, invented this cabinet in my own mind and have drafted it all and marked it out. I have cut it [the marquetry] with a fret-saw and shaded it. This was done in the Sander quarter, near Korn Gasse by the river Main. But neither of us will be staying here much longer. This cabinet has been completed in the winter month[s], and we would like to go elsewhere, for little meat and a great deal of cabbage and turnips have driven us out of Würzburg. We ask him who finds this note to drink our health and if we are no longer living then, may God grant us eternal rest and salvation. This 22nd day of October in the year 1716.”
Jacob’s letter gives us a window into a workshop capable of producing a writing cabinet using materials from at least three continents while the craftsmen were living in very straitened circumstances. The contrast between the rich details and opulence of the cabinet and the makers’ steady diet of cabbage and peas is startling. Jacob was working in his brother’s court-appointed workshop, which probably gave him some level of security, but had reached a point of desperation. How had living conditions deteriorated to the extent he and Johannes decided they had to leave? Life traveling from town to town seeking work was not only dangerous there was also no guarantee they would find enough work and wages to survive.
In describing their diet and lack of bread and meat Jacob gives us a key to what had happened to their food supply. In the V&A analysis the harsh winter of 1714-15 was noted as having a dire impact on the following year’s harvest. I did my own investigation to learn more about the weather conditions.
Europe at that time was in a weather pattern called the Late Maunder Minimum (LMM) also known as “The Little Ice Age.” The winter of 1714-15 was very cold and dry and the beginning of a drought that would cause crop failures. There were also more instances of forest fires. With a shortage of grains, prices were raised, farmers could afford to feed fewer livestock and grains for bread and other foodstuffs became more scarce. Drought conditions caused water levels to drop and transport of goods, including lumber, became more difficult and costly. Jacob mentions the poor grape harvest the last four years (and increased price of wine) indicating an extended period of poor crop yields. Jacob writes in a joking manner, “…we have grown so fat that we can hardly climb the stairs any more.” The V&A analysis indicated the term fat may mean bloating from the diet of cabbage and peas or could be the much more serious symptom of prolonged starvation. In the German text there is some ambiguity on whether Jacob had written about the lack of ‘broden’ (bread) or ‘braden’ (roast meat). If they were at the point of a scarcity of bread their level of hunger was more severe.
An additional factor adding instability to the region was another war with Ottoman forces. European forces led by Prince Eugene of Savoy won the Battle of Peterwardein in August 1716. The recipient of the fancy cabinet (von Hohlach) supplied troops and supplies to Prince Eugene and this likely caused an additional drain on local resources.
Based on the workmanship in the writing cabinet and the fact that Jacob was from Koblentz it is thought he may have trained in Mainz (further up the river Main). As journeymen Jacob and Johannes probably had some familiarity with the conditions and dangers they would face once they became itinerant craftsmen. Besides the hunger they were suffering, I wonder if the workshop had already experienced a significant decrease in the quantity of work coming in. Also, Jacob was a bachelor and may have thought about how he could reduce the economic burden on his brother’s family. One or two less mouths to feed could certainly make a difference.
With the writing cabinet completed and the decision made to leave the shop, Jacob wrote his “message in a bottle.” I don’t see any great mystery on why he wrote his letter and why he hid it. The workshop had endured months of growing hunger while building a magnificent monster. Facing an extremely difficult and perilous future Jacob was saying “I was here and I made this!” The cabinet was his design; he worked on the marquetry and the veneer. He was proud of the cabinet while at the same time very aware that it might be the last piece he would ever make. As a journeyman this was the only way he had of signing his work. Jacob built the cabinet with his talent and sweat and with the letter he was adding one last and very personal part of himself to the piece. He wanted to be remembered.
So what happened to the two journeymen? There is no other record of Johannes Witthalm. Ten years after leaving Würzburg Jacob Arend was appointed cabinetmaker at the court of Fulda and in 1744 he died at age 56. Two years later his son, Carl Philip, was appointed cabinetmaker to the court at Fulda.
City of Fulda
The owner of the Würzburg writing cabinet, von Hohlach, was booted out of his position not long after the cabinet was completed. The cabinet and other court furniture were sold to England early in the 19th century when Würzburg became part of Bavaria. The last English owners were the Gibbons. The cabinet is in the background of the 1846 painting “The Shell” by Charles Robert Leslie (commissioned by John Gibbons). On December 26, 1967 two young Gibbons boys were searching for secret compartments and found Jacob Arend’s letter. The cabinet was loaned to the V&A in 1968 and sold to the museum in 1977.
–Suzanne Ellison
Von Hohlach’s cypher on open writing flap.
Marquetry at top most section, left side.
“The Shell” painting, 1846, writing cabinet in background.
Students, friends and mental health professionals have asked me how I became interested in researching old crap through books, paintings and by rebuilding vanished forms.
They expect an answer like: “Oh, I’ve always liked history” or some such. That’s not true. I hated history until college.
The real answer is this: In 1986 I read page 101 of Michael Baxandall’s “Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy” (Oxford). That did it.
OK, that’s an exaggeration. It was actually pages 95-101.
Starting on page 95, Baxandall begins a discussion of the “Rule of Three,” a common way to solve simple commercial math problems. Here’s an explanation by Piero della Francesca:
The Rule of Three says that one has to multiply the thing that one wants to know about by the thing that is dissimilar to it, and one divides the product by the remaining thing…. For example: seven bracci of cloth are worth nine lire; how much will five bracci be worth?
Today we might represent this equation as 7:9 = 5:X, but that’s a fairly modern way to represent the idea. Earlier merchants would line up the parts of the equation like this: 7 9 5 (result).
So why is this a big deal? Many in the merchant culture used this equation every day. It was so familiar that they made jokes that played upon the proportional relationships of numbers.
“The merchants’ geometric proportion was a precise awareness of ratios. It was not a harmonic proportion, of any convention, but it was the means by which a convention of harmonic proportion must be handled,” Baxandall writes.
Such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Study of the proportion of a head.” Baxandall writes:
…Leonardo is using the Rule of Three for a problem about weights in a balance, and comes up with the four terms 6 8 9 12: it is a very simple sequence that any merchant would be used to. But it is also the sequence of the Pythagorean harmonic scale – tone, diatessaron, diapente, and diapason…. Take four pieces of string, of equal consistency, 6, 8, 9, and 12 inches long, and vibrate them under equal tension. The interval between 6 and 12 is an octave; between 6 and 9 and between 8 and 12 a fifth; between 6 and 8 and between 9 and 12 a fourth; between 8 and 9 a major tone. This is the whole basis of western harmony.
And so I was hooked. Was this true? Do these relationships show up all around us?
We haven’t forgotten about “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years” book – it’s just so massive that everything takes a long time to do. I think we are in our seventh year of working on this book now.
As penance, I offer up this awesome drawing from Hayward on making grooves.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. This is just a quick scan of the paper proof. Our real scans are much crisper.
Although Henry Lapp’s craftsmanship was long celebrated in his Amish community, it wasn’t until the 1970s that he was “discovered”. Prior to an auction of a scrapbook of small paintings (found by a collector in the 1920s) an exhibit of his art work was held and a new folk artist had arrived. In 1975 a facsimile edition of his handbook of designs for furniture and household items was published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the work of a 19th century craftsmen was found.
Henry’s handbook came to light in the 1950s when a descendant sold a bureau he had made to a dealer. Inside one of the drawers was a 4-1/2″ x 8″ softcover book with Henry’s stamp on the cover. In 1958 the handbook was donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Henry Lapp’s Handbook
The handbook is filled with Henry’s drawings of chests, washstands, desks, boxes, games and toys and a variety of items for use on the farm and in the home. Henry painted each piece in bright colors and often with painted patterns. The handbook was his commercial catalog showing the wide range of goods he could make for his customers. The image above is a great example of the furniture and household items he offered, as well as the exuberance of his color combinations. There is absolutely no reason the boxes used for gathering fruits and vegetables can’t be yellow and green, or for that matter, purple and green. Do you need a seed cabinet? How about a nice orange and yellow combination? A little wagon in red? Let me show you one in green.
Henry Lapp was born in 1862 in Leacock Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and was fifth-generation Old Order Amish. He was born deaf and at least partially mute. Based on the number of his paintings that have surfaced in the last 30-40 years he seems to have drawn and painted from an early age. He was not alone in his artist takents. Besides raising a large family his mother was known as a gifted textile artist and his sister was also a painter. We don’t know for sure if Henry learned his trade from his father or was apprenticed to a carpenter or cabinetmaker. In the 1890 local business directory he was listed as a carpenter; six years later he was listed as a cabinetmaker.
In 1884 Henry’s father, Michael, died. Several years later his mother remarried and within a short time Henry bought about 10 acres of land from his step-brother. His property was right along the Philadelphia Pike in Bird-in-Hand where he built a house, a carriage barn and a cabinet shop. At the front of his shop he had a store for hardware and paint. Eventually he added a windmill to the top of his shop to provide power for his saws and lathes. In an interview for an article in Folk Art Magazine a family member said if Henry was at a social gathering and happened to notice a rise in the wind he would leave and go to his shop to cut lumber.
Henry was known to be friendly and outgoing and liked to travel to visit friends and relatives in Amish communities in Indiana, Ohio and Canada. He made trips to Philadelphia to take his pieces to market and to restock items for his hardware store. He also picked up ideas to incorporate into his furniture designs. Beatrice B. Garvin curated the facsimile edition of Henry’s handbook and noted that his washstand designs were more typical of large urban houses. She also noted the carrot-shaped foot and bulbous rounded foot on some of his pieces were variations of models made in mahogany and rosewood by Philadelphia cabinetmakers. Henry’s flat areas of color were more typical of Welsh settlers east of Lancaster County rather then the painted figures of the old Germanic tradition.
Henry’s paintings included animals, plants, flowers and reproductions of advertisements. His reproduction of an old campaign flyer for the 1868 presidential campaign shows his love of color and eye for detail. By making a quilt of the eagle’s feathers he added color and impact. I think he was also having some fun.
On the other hand, his study of deer is a quiet observation of nature with varying shades of brown paint helping to differentiate each animal (and the antlers and ears of the buck).
Of the many items Henry offered for sale a few pieces are my favorites: an eggbeater, bread toasters, an apparatus for washing day (otherwise known as a laundry rack), a choice of ladders in yellow or green and his wheelbarrows. There is also a bit of whimsey in his page showing a variety of picture frames. Henry painted some pictures in a few of the frames.
Henry was also an inventor. In February 1899 he was issued a patent for an improved shutter bolt to better secure the heavy wooden shutters commonly found on homes.
In 1904, about six weeks before his 42nd birthday, Henry died of lead poisoning from exposure to the paints he mixed. Because he never married his estate was auctioned. An inventory of his shop included chests with woodworking tools, circular saws, a mortise cutter, mortising jack, molding machine, 2 grinding stones, lumber and supplies. Henry’s apprentice, Noah Zook, bought much of the shop equipment and furniture patterns and opened his own shop a few miles down Philadelphia Pike.
A few years ago I was introduced to Henry’s handbook by a coworker from the Lancaster County area: “You don’t know Henry? You have to have a copy of his book!” Chris Schwarz knew Henry’s artwork but wasn’t aware of his furniture handbook. If you don’t know Henry he is waiting for you to discover him and his world. I don’t think you will be disappointed. After all, the slogan above the entrance to Henry’s store was “There is none that equals.”
–Suzanne Ellison
P.S. The gallery has a selection of Henry’s work. If you want more, the Philadelphia Museum of art has all 47 pages of Henry’s handbook online here. Copies of “A Craftsman’s Handbook” published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Tinicum Press are still available (watch out for gougers). This facsimile edition includes short notes on each piece by curator Beatrice Garvan. Good Reads, a small publisher in Lancaster County, also published a softcover edition.
