We have noted in numerous previous posts that one type of collecting (books, for example) often leads one to other types of collecting (library exhibition posters, for instance, or keepsakes and other bookish ephemera).
Your faithful blogger was reminded of this while penning the recent post on bonnet books. It seems inconceivable that one could collect such books in any depth without quickly becoming aware of the equally collectible ephemera known as fraktur (the writing model below, via FrakturWeb, is by the circuit-riding Reformed minister George Geistweit):
Fraktur, according to FrakturWeb, is
a folk art form practiced by Pennsylvania Germans principally from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The name derives from that of a distinctive German script marked by "fractured" pen strokes and the form has clear roots in European folk culture. Fraktur blossomed into a uniquely rich, colorful and iconographic form of expression in the United States, tied to rites of social life.
Odlis observes that fraktur is
[a] form of illumination practiced by the Pennsylvania Dutch in which a document or brief text is decorated with colorful drawings of birds, flowers, trees, human figures, and other ornamental motifs.... Most frakturs are birth, baptismal, or marriage certificates produced from the 1760s to the early 20th century, almost always in German.
The taufscheine (birth or baptism certificate) below dates to the early 19th century:
As noted above, English-language examples of fraktur are uncommon. The example below is by Esther Ruth Shisler:
Two references are particularly favored by collectors of fraktur. The first (below left, image via FrakturWeb), although penned in 1961, remains enormously important (part of the collection on which it is based was sold in late 2004 for close to U.S. $900,000.00); the second reference (below right) was published in 2005 by Oak Knoll Press:
FrakturWeb has put together its own top ten list of books about the subject, among which are the two volumes below. (If you're seriously interested in this collectible, you'll also want to visit FrakturWeb's list of Related Resources and the Links of Interest found at the website of The Pennsylvania German Society....)
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