Mahantongo blanket chests

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Philip D. Zimmerman

Isolated by mountain ranges to the northwest and southeast, the long, fertile Mahantongo Creek valley in central Pennsylvania is a land where time had slowed. The Pennsylvania Germans who lived there between the late 1820s and the early 1840s made furniture decorated with brightly colored designs of modernist simplicity rendered in a palette of green, yellow, red, blue, and black. For many collectors today the relatively late date of this traditional furniture expresses a sense of isolation from the rest of the United States, which was at that time in the process of industrializing, as well as a community effort to retain old values and practices in the face of change. Others have become aware of this furniture for the high prices it fetches on the market.

More than eighty pieces of Mahantongo furniture are known. (1) Most are chests of drawers and desks, but some blanket chests, cupboards, and small boxes also survive. Most students of American furniture are familiar with the appearance of this furniture, but information about it is sparse. (2) Unlike many areas of study in the decorative arts, there is a strong preference for anonymity regarding any information about Mahantongo furniture. Not surprisingly an article published in 1998 depended in part on the authority of an unnamed "construction historian" who had studied this furniture for more than three decades. (3) Such mystery may enhance the appeal of this furniture for many people, but it clouds scholarly efforts to achieve a better understanding of it.

The discovery of a hitherto unrecorded blanket chest (P1. I) creates an opportunity to relate it to four similar blanket chests (Pls. V, VII, VIII, X) and to Mahantongo furniture in general. The present study records and codifies several properties of these blanket chests and draws conclusions about them, some of which apply to the broader body of Mahantongo furniture and early nineteenth-century painted furniture in general. Paint-related findings presented here draw on microscopic analysis of the chest in Plate land related evidence.

Using dated examples, furniture historians divide Mahantongo furniture into two periods: 1798-1828 and 1827-1841. Grain painting distinguishes the earlier group (see P1. II), whereas the later group has vividly painted decoration on a solid field, typically green, blue, or red. Scholars also note gradual acceptance among these Pennsylvania Germans of English furniture forms, noting in particular that the convenient, but non German, chest of drawers was absent in the early group, but common later. (4) In addition to painted decoration, the later blanket chests differ from the early ones in that they have turned rather than ogee bracket feet, and they have no functioning drawers below the chest section (although the chest in Pl. has two false drawers along the bottom).

The sharp distinction between early and late Mahantongo furniture raises the question of what happened in 1827 and 1828 to cause such a fundamental change. To date there is no answer, but two observations have merit. First, because the Mahantongo community was small and closely knit, the change may have been caused by the death or retirement of one or more craftsmen. Second, the change was probably more gradual than historians describe. Several of these pieces of furniture share characteristics of both groups, such as a hanging cupboard with grain-painted sides and a green front with yellow rosettes, and a grain-painted chest of drawers with rosettes. (5) The blanket chest dated 1834 (6) shown in Plates VI and Via, although made in the later period, is decorated with a stylized grain-painted pattern and bears all the structural properties of chests in the first group. This suggests that the change in styles may have taken place over the course of years, or perhaps a decade. In the transitional years buyers co uld have been exposed to both decorative schemes and may have expressed their preference for one or the other.

At first glance the blanket chests in Plates I, V, VII, VIII, and X appear to be very similar, but on closer examination they differ in a number of ways. Although one might expect there to be consistency in the woods used, variety is the rule. Of the five, the three in Plates V, VIII, and X are predominantly yellow pine, and the two in Plates I and VII are predominantly tulip poplar. (7) One unexpected common denominator is the use of walnut battens on the chests in Plates I, V, and VIII. Since paint covered the battens, this wood must have been selected for its durability and resistance to warping.

Four of the five chests (Pls. I, V, VIII, and VIII) have the same dimensions within one and one-half inches. The exception is the chest in Plate X, which is proportionately smaller in all dimensions. All five are similar in construction. The side boards are joined with wedged dovetails; bottom boards are nailed or pegged in place; there is a lidded till inside on the left; and the feet are turned. (8) The lids of the chests in Plates I, V, and VII are made of a single board more than eighteen inches wide, glued to a strip of wood less than three inches wide along the back. Lest there seems to be too much consistency it must be noted that the chest in Plate VII also has a thin strip glued across the top of the backboard-a practice not observed on any of the other chests-and the chests in Plates VIII and X have full-width boards throughout. Four of the lids have a molding strip pegged to the front edge. The lid of the chest in Plate I is molded along the front edge (see P1. Ic), and an additional strip of moldi ng applied along the underside of the top board continues the decorative profile.