GREENSBURG - Collectors of antiques will probably reflexively reach for their checkbooks as they stroll through "Made in Pennsylvania: A Folk Art Tradition," but, alas, nothing is for sale.
The exhibit, which opens Saturday at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, contains about 400 examples of 18th and 19th century folk art that are bound to quicken the pulse of avid "Antiques Roadshow" watchers: painted furniture; textiles; stoneware; and fraktur, folk art drawings made by German immigrants.
The items in "Made in Pennsylvania" come from the Westmoreland Museum of American Art's own collection, and the collections of such institutions as the Waynesburg College Museum, the Washington County Historical Society and the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. Private collections also were tapped, and many of the collectors were "excited that someone was finally going to do this," according to Frank Swala, a Jefferson resident and guest curator who is overseeing the stoneware portion of "Made in Pennsylvania."
In fact, the idea for the exhibit was born when Harley Trice, a member of the museum's board of trustees, suggested creating an exhibit around Pennsylvania-made stoneware. It was decided that the focus would be too narrow, however, and that it should be broadened to include other folk art items made in Pennsylvania in the same time period.
"There's a connection between all these categories that pulls them all together as folk art," according to Barbara Jones, the museum's curator.
The time period covered by "Made in Pennsylvania" stretches from about the mid-1700s to 1900. Most of the stoneware in the exhibit hails from the Pittsburgh region, while almost all the furniture comes from Somerset County, which was a center of furniture making in the 1800s.
The fraktur come from all over the Commonwealth, with some bearing lettering styles and motifs that are specific to a certain region. Most are in German and were made to commemorate life passages like baptism or marriage. Many contain religious iconography like angels. One sings the praises of "virtuous activity" and another depicts the Biblical parable of the prodigal son.
Most of the artisans who worked on the stoneware, samplers and other items in "Made in Pennsylvania" were anonymous, everyday people; however, the exhibit contains at least one exception - an ornate coverlet from 1845 was made by Henry Overholt, the great-grandfather of Pittsburgh industrialist Henry Clay Frick. It was lent to the exhibit by a Pittsburgh collector.
Like its neighbor Ohio, Pennsylvania was thick with German immigrants in the 19th century, and they brought folk art traditions with them from home, Jones said. At the same time, French and English art and furniture-making traditions were largely centered in New England, Jones said.
Many activities will be happening at the museum over the next four months in conjunction with "Made in Pennsylvania." Guest curators R. David Brocklebank and Charles Muller will be joining Jones for an in-depth tour of the furniture and fraktur sections of the exhibit at 7 p.m. July 19. A corresponding tour of the stoneware and textile sections is set for Aug. 16 at 7 p.m., with Jones, Swala and Trice, who is the guest curator for the textiles portion of "Made in Pennsylvania."
A daylong symposium on Pennsylvania folk art is planned for Sept 14, and registration is required. An 80-page catalog also is being published by the museum.