Douglas Volk and the arts and crafts in Maine

Arlene M. Palmer

Renowned in his day as an artist and teacher, Douglas Volk has received little attention in recent years, and his role in the arts and crafts movement has been all but forgotten. From 1898 until about 1908, Hewn Oaks, the summer house he and his wife, Marion Larrabee Volk, built in western Maine (see Figs. 3-6 and 9), was an active "Center of Art and Handicraft," (1) where Volk determined to "revive a few of the old industries that were carried on in the farm houses" (2) in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although he inspired and guided the venture, Volk kept to his easel painting, while his wife, children, friends, and neighbors were busy carving wood and making rugs. The Volks operated a small printing press, organized exhibitions, and offered classes. They encouraged local residents in the production of handicrafts and in February 1902 formally organized what they called the Sabatos Handicraft Society. (3) The Hewn Oaks movement enjoyed a modest amount of publicity during the early 1900s, but it soon faded out of view.

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The property, an idyllic setting on Kezar Lake in Center Lovell, looking toward the White Mountains of New Hampshire, eventually passed largely intact to the Volks' daughter-in-law, the artist Jessie McCoig Volk. In 2006 the University of Maine Foundation, the beneficiary of her estate, sold at auction the artworks and historical furnishings that had been preserved in eight buildings. (4) Before her death, Jessie Volk donated some family records to the Archives of American Art, but the auction dispersed thousands of additional documents and photographs that detailed the artistic accomplishments and connections of this remarkable family. While piecing together the complete story may no longer be possible, this article will attempt to provide an overview of Hewn Oaks and the artistic endeavors the Volks pursued there.

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The son of the sculptor Leonard Wells Volk (Fig. 14), Douglas Volk studied with Jean Leon Gerome at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1873 to 1879. His fellow American students included George de Forest Brush (1855-1941) and Julian Alden Weir. Volk's portrait of Weir, painted in Paris about 1877, remained at Hewn Oaks (Fig. 8). Another student, Wyatt Eaton, painted Volk's portrait in 1875 (Fig. 2). (5) By the time he was twenty, Volk's paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon and the United States Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and his future as an artist was assured.

In the 1880s and 1890s Volk won acclaim for his historical and idealized subjects. Embracing the colonial revival, he turned to seventeenth-century New England for such works as Puritan Captives (whereabouts unknown), which was exhibited at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Some critics felt that his Accused of Witchcraft of 1884 (whereabouts unknown) gave "him an eminently strong title to be classed among our most competent historical painters." (6)

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At the time Volk was building Hewn Oaks, he created Song of the Pines (whereabouts unknown), in which a lovely young woman wearing a long robe and clasping a pine branch against her breast stands with her head uplifted against the background of tall pines. Critics hailed the painting as a "fine example of exalted symbolism." (7)

Volk's career as an art educator began in 1879 with a teaching appointment at the Cooper Institute in New York City. Seven years later the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts hired him to be the founding director of its School of Fine Arts (now Minneapolis College of Art and Design), a position he held until 1893. He then returned to New York where he joined the faculty of the Art Students League and resumed his post at the Cooper Institute. In 1895 he also taught at the Cowles Art School in Boston. Between 1898 and 1906 he apparently held no major teaching positions, focusing instead on his own career--and on Hewn Oaks.

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While living in Minneapolis, Volk had acquired a summer studio and retreat in Osceola, Wisconsin, which he and Marion enjoyed with their four children: Leonard (1882-1891), Wendell, Marion (1888-1973), and Gerome (1890-1955). A contemporary description conveys the artistic character of the place, where the rough walls of the large living room were

hung with all kinds of artistic draperies and panels, from fine Oriental
embroideries to stained burlaps. Engravings, etchings and drawings in
plain frames are hung in careless profusion in all unoccupied wall
space. The great brick chimney is flanked by large tree trunks and piles
of boulders, and many receptacles, filled with an infinite variety of
the beautiful native ferns, occupy corners or hang from the ceiling,
which is also ornamented by many lanterns of different designs. (8)

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After returning to New York in 1893, the Volks looked to Maine for a vacation house. Douglas Volk had visited the state in 1880 when he took his class of Cooper Institute art students--fourteen young women--on a month-long sketching trip to the Sebago Lake area. (9) It may have been George de Forest Brush who introduced the Volks to Center Lovell; he rented a cottage there in 1893 and expected them to visit. (10) In 1896 the Volks visited friends in nearby Bridgton, Maine, (10) and by 1897 another friend, Percival Chubb (1860-1960) acquired a summer house in Center Lovell. (11) Chubb was an active member of the Society for Ethical Culture, founded by the philosopher Felix Adler (1851-1933) in New York City in 1876, with which Volk was also associated. Several members of the society summered in Lovell and held devotional meetings in a dramatic grove of pines dubbed the "Cathedral" on the Hewn Oaks property. (12)

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The Volks first rented a farm in Center Lovell for the summer of 1897 and started building the following year. (13) Oxford County land deeds reveal that Marion purchased the property in 1898 jointly with Carrie Stow Waite, a friend from New Jersey; neither Douglas Volk nor Waite's husband Horace was a principal in the purchase. The two women divided the property in 1901, and Marion subsequently added to her half, creating a lot of about twenty-five acres. (14)

To Alice Frost Lord (1871-1966), a Maine journalist who visited Hewn Oaks in 1904, Marion Volk explained the appeal of their retreat: "It is this out-of-door life we enjoy most and so you will find the whole place uncitified. It is just as close to nature as we can make it, to live comfortably, and when we built our house we decided that should be in keeping with this idea." (15) She explained that they called the house Hewn Oaks because it was entirely hand made (see Fig. 4), continuing:

The walls are thick and tons of oak are in the heavy beams. The plates
and sills and posts are all hewn with the axe, dovetailed and pegged
with wood. Split hemlock boards are used for lathing on which Portland
cement is laid for the exterior of the walls. Even the hinges are of
hammered iron from a native forge.

Lord also recorded that a short distance from the main house was a tiny one-room cabin where Wendell and Gerome slept and which was soon extended and became known as Viking Court. The studio building, called Sans Souci, was perched on the brink of a hill, she observed, and a boathouse, Charming Retreat (Figs. 3, 6), was under construction. (16)

In the main house Lord delighted in the "big fireplace of old-fashioned dimensions, the latticed windows, the open stairway curving to the second floor with its sleeping rooms, the odd bookcases, the richly carved chests,... the draperies and hangings woven by the elder son." "Everywhere," she wrote, "were evidences of the artistic taste of the owners." (17) Volk's interest in the colonial past had led him to collect American antique furnishings from local families, and these were effectively combined with furniture and textiles made at Hewn Oaks.

Although Hewn Oaks was primarily a summer retreat, the Volks' use of the property was not restricted to the warm months. Marion spent the winter of 1899 to 1900 there, Douglas came up in December 1901, and both were at Hewn Oaks in February 1902, when they hosted the founding meeting of the Sabatos Handicraft Society.

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Douglas Volk articulated his views on handicrafts in a 1904 letter: "Any object which is professedly an example of the handicrafts idea, ought to be genuinely constructed by hand," he wrote, "not in part, but, within rational limits, in its entirety." He believed:

a large measure of the beauty of an article of handmake is due, not only
to the decoration there may be upon it, but also to the character of the
materials employed and the methods used in their preparation or
construction. Beauty is organic, and the true craftsman delights in
seeing the evidence of the hand and brain throughout his creation. The
genuine handi-crafts man does not evade difficulties at any point, but
by overcoming them, he gives that stamp of individuality and sincerity
to his work, which makes it precious for all time. (18)

The Volks envisioned Hewn Oaks as an arts and craft center where the handicrafts of the past would be revived, nurtured, and celebrated. By the summer of 1901 they had organized an exhibition in the Center Lovell town hall that featured locally made examples such as baskets, wrought iron, and textiles. (19)

Among those who loaned work to the 1901 exhibition was the Swedish-born woodcarver Karl Von Rydingsvard. That same year Volk arranged for Von Rydingsvard to carve a writing table and chair that the Society for Ethical Culture presented to Adler. (20) The Swede also executed some carvings for the exterior of Hewn Oaks and probably carved an oak bench for the Volks that was in the living room by 1904 (Fig. 7). (21) Although Von Rydingsvard established a summer school of his own on property he purchased in 1903 near Brunswick, Maine, he was able to supervise a summer course in woodcarving at Hewn Oaks in 1904. (22) Volk may have been exposed to Scandinavian design elements during his tenure in Minnesota, but it was probably Von Rydingsvard who introduced specific motifs from Scandinavian mythology into the design vocabulary at Hewn Oaks. The "gnomes, goblins, and eccentric sea monsters ... of his Viking fatherland" (23) are seen in the bench in Figure 7 and in the painted ceiling panels that Jessie Volk later executed for the main room of the Viking Court cottage (Figs. 1 and 10).

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Among Von Rydingsvard's best pupils was the Volks' son Wendell, who made the dining room table for the main house in 1903 (Figs. 13, 13a). Handcrafted of oak, this sawbuck table features a carved frieze of knights, dragons, and heraldic shields, with the initial V worked into the design. Wendell assisted Von Rydingsvard the following year with the wood-carving classes, which cost fifteen dollars for a five-week course. Materials were supplied at "very reasonable prices" and tools were furnished free of charge. Pupils were encouraged to carry out their own designs. Bookracks, stools, benches, and frames were among the useful objects suggested for carving. (24) Wendell initialed the carved bookrack in Figure 11 and he probably also carved the small table in Figure 12, both of which were among the Hewn Oaks furnishings. His most flamboyant carvings were frames for his father's paintings. Inscribed in Douglas Volk's hand on the back of the portrait of his father, Leonard, in Figure 14 is, "carved by my son Wendell from an Italian design." A similar but even more elaborate frame attributed to Wendell surrounds the portrait of a young woman in Figure 15.

Wendell Volk also operated the Hewn Beam Press, printing a few pamphlets and a newsletter called the Fire Fly: A Periodical of Fearless Endeavour on handmade paper (see Fig. 11). The only three known issues of the Fire Fly appeared in the summer of 1900. Intended "for the Advancement of Sociability, Fire Side Industry and Fishing and the Edification of Its Readers," it included essays, poetry, humor, news of summer residents and their visitors, and advertisements. By the summer of 1902 Wendell's effort was known as the Sabatos Press.

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Sabatos was a name already attached to the rug business the Volks had started in 1900 and was soon more broadly used to denote all the handicrafts they encouraged in the area. Nearby Sabattus Mountain inspired the name, which Marion Volk said they found spelled "Sabatos" in an "old book with a story of a fight between an Indian and a catamount on that precipitous height." (25)

In the first issue of the Fire Fly Douglas Volk wrote that it had occurred to him that "something might be done to make the 'rag rug' a thing of beauty, and co[m]mercial value." (26) Given an increasing demand for handmade artistic textiles, and aware of the successful revival of early crafts elsewhere in New England, the Volks "thought it might be profitable ... to interest the native women here in the woven rug." (27) They enlisted a number of women for the project, but keeping them involved was a challenge. As Marion Volk said in an interview, "we have found the farmer's wives well-to-do. They do not need to earn money by this slow, laborious work. Besides they have enough to keep them busy on their farms, so that they can give but little of their time to rug making." (28)

The production of the Sabatos rugs, thoroughly described and illustrated in the Volks' own pamphlets as well as in several national periodicals of the early 1900s, was indeed arduous. (29) Short-cut methods were not compatible with their philosophy, and the challenge of mastering technical difficulties provided an important measure of satisfaction and pleasure. (30)

The first task was to locate an old loom, which the Volks did "after much hunting, under a load of corn in one of the native houses." (31) They erected it in an apple orchard and then secured some elderly housewives to teach them how to use it. Von Rydingsvard also carved an exquisite loom for Marion Volk, which is now in the Maine State Museum in Augusta. Wool from local Lovell sheep was carded at a water-powered mill in Waterford, Maine, the only part of the process that was done mechanically. At Hewn Oaks and in several farmhouses of the town, women spun the wool into two weights of yarn, one for the pile and one for the undyed webbing.

Dyeing presented the greatest obstacle. Finding no published information on the subject, Marion despaired and was ready to give up, "but Mr. Volk was interested and persistent," she told Lord:

We found the native women used the butternut and sweet apple bark with
good effect, but we wanted the beautiful fast colors of indigo blue, the
madder reds and gray greens, colors from vegetable dyes that would be
sure only to mellow and soften with age. So we kept on experimenting
with the different barks until at last we produced just what we were
after. (32)

The first rugs, made over the winter of 1899 to 1900, were shown in New York City "to a number of experts, who were enthusiastic in their praise and several orders were given for rugs like them." (33) However, they were not knotted and Marion quickly realized that they "would soon go to pieces with shaking and sweeping." She then spent weeks experimenting with knots. "At last we originated one," she said, "now known to be peculiar to our Sabatos rug. With this knot the rugs, which represent so much work, will not whip or snap out with use." (34)

Although some Sabatos rugs exhibit an oriental influence in their design, others were inspired by American Indian motifs. "These," the Volks wrote, "not only furnish opportunities for broad color effects, but have a character and interest which appeal to most of us." (35) Wendell Volk, who like his sister Marion became an accomplished weaver, made a particular study of Navajo weaving and design. At the age of eighteen he had been appointed an instructor in weaving in the domestic art department of the Teachers College at Columbia University in New York City. During the summers at Hewn Oaks he offered classes in weaving; for an extra charge he would teach the Navajo method.

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Several very long, narrow wool weavings (see Fig. 16) from Hewn Oaks have hand-sewn geometric motifs, and one bears Wendell's initials and an S mark for Sabatos (Fig. 16, left). Too long to be useful as table runners, these may be "strip portieres," a form shown at the 1901 exhibition in the town hall in Center Lovell. The Volks and their fellow artisans also made a handwoven fabric of linen and wool, which they considered "very effective for portieres, window hangings, table covers, etc" (see Fig. 17). (36)

"Thorough in workmanship, artistic in design, and honest throughout," (37) the Sabatos rugs and weavings were not meant to be more than "a result of local possibilities," (38) yet they were acclaimed as works of art, and in 1904 a rug made by Marion Volk won a medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis (Fig. 18). (39) Orders were plentiful, but Volk and her neighbors could not meet the demand. In 1904 she told Lord that she and another woman worked five or six hours daily for five months to create a rug four-and-a-half by six feet; that she had only made seven rugs entirely by herself; and that fewer than forty rugs were produced in four years. (40) When Lord visited Hewn Oaks again in 1912 she reported that rug making had ceased several years before, chiefly because Marion Volk "had not the health and strength to give to make it a success, and partly because of the difficulty in obtaining enough workers among the people here to guarantee a profitable output." (41)

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While Douglas Volk worked hard to make the Hewn Oaks handicraft movement a success, he remained primarily devoted to his painting throughout this period. The Maine woods were a constant source of inspiration for him, and many of his figural subjects were set in the surrounding landscape. Some of his models, like the young girl who posed for The Woodland Maid (whereabouts unknown), spent a summer at Hewn Oaks. (42) In 1904 Volk painted the full-blooded Sioux Indian Dan Hashorns and had him living in a tent on the property. (43) During the summer of 1903 the artist Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), who had discovered the attractions of Center Lovell the previous year, occupied a shack at the entrance to Hewn Oaks, hoping he would somehow benefit from the artistic environment. Although Douglas Volk apparently paid little attention to his painting, Hartley continued to work in the region for a decade. (44)

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By 1912 the Volks' involvement in handicrafts had been reduced to helping with displays of the Suncook Grange at the annual Oxford County fairs. Wendell and Gerome had gone west in 1909. Although Wendell wrote eagerly to his mother of his hopes of becoming an instructor in weaving and woodcarving at the Beaux Arts Society school in what is now Beaux Arts Village, Washington, near Seattle, these plans were not realized. Instead, he pursued a career in civil engineering and between 1909 and 1913 worked on mines, railroads, and dam sites throughout the West and in Alaska. (45)

As Douglas Volk's health declined in the decade following his wife's death in 1925, the future of Hewn Oaks became uncertain. In the 1930s, anxious over financial difficulties, Douglas spent little time painting. He wintered at an inn in nearby Fryeburg, Maine, while his children wrangled over Hewn Oaks, which was heavily mortgaged. After Volk's death in 1935, Wendell and his wife, Jessie, eventually obtained the property. The indefatigable Alice Frost Lord visited Hewn Oaks once again in 1939, and found that, although Wendell was by profession a construction engineer, "he shares with his wife the hobby of arts and crafts so that the house today is full of their workmanship." (46) Among other things, Jessie did metalwork and took to painting the ceilings and rafters of the cottages (see Fig. 10). When Wendell and Jessie decided to open buildings at what they called Hewnoaks as housekeeping cottages for summer tourists, they updated them with modern conveniences and then built additional cabins. Their promotional brochures emphasized the brilliant landscape while noting that the dwellings of "unusual distinction" would appeal to those "who want a quiet, artistic atmosphere." The cottages were "completely furnished including blankets, silver, books and paintings by NAs [National Academicians]." (47)

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For their help with research for this article I would like to express my thanks to John Hoffmann of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, John Mayer of the Maine Historical Society, Catherine Stone of the Lovell Historical Society, Phyllis Carlson, Tim Stevenson, Douglas Hawes, Susan H. Myers, and James D. Cyr.

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(1) Alice Frost Lord, "At the Home of the Volks in Lovell: A Center of Art and Handicraft," Lewiston Journal, Illustrated Magazine Section, (September 10-14, 1904), p. 1. I am grateful to John Hoffmann for bringing this article to my attention.

(2) The Sabatos Rug, Handicrafts Ctr. Lovell (Sabatos Press, February 1902), p. 2, copy in the Maine Historical Society, Portland. In the early years the Volks seem to have preferred the two-word spelling of Hewn Oaks; later signs and maps made by their son used a single word spelling, Hewnoaks.

(3) "Lovell Center: The Sebatos [sic] Handicraft Society," Oxford County Advertiser, February 14, 1902.

(4) The auction was held July 19, 2006 at Cyr Auction Company, Gray, Maine.

(5) Entries for February 15 and March 10, 1875, personal account book of Douglas Volk, Archives of American Art, Washington, D. C.

(6) William Howe Downes and Frank Torrey Robinson, "Later American Masters," New England Magazine, n.s., vol. 14, no. 2 (April 1896), p. 145.

(7) Charles H. Caffin, "Art: Some Notable Features of the Twentieth Annual Exhibition of the Society of American Artists," Harper's Weekly, vol. 42, no. 2153 (March 26, 1898), p. 310; Song of the Pines is illustrated on p. 293, Fig. 5.

(8) Martha Scott Anderson, "Favored by Dame Nature," clipping from unidentified Minnesota newspaper, 1894, in Douglas Volk Scrapbook, collection of the author.

(9) This was such a novelty that an illustrated account of it was published; see Olive Thorne Miller, "The Girls' Sketching Camp," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 63, no. 376 (September 1881), pp. 522-535.

(10) George de Forest Brush to Douglas Volk, March 23, 1893, Volk Scrapbook.

(11) For Marion Volk's mention of Bridgton, see Lord, "At the Home," p. 1. For Percival Chubb in Center Lovell, see Pauline W. Moore, Blueberries and Pusley Weed: The Story of Lovell, Maine (Star Press, Kennebunk, Maine, 1970), p. 207.

(12) "Famous Persons at Home CXII: Douglas Volk," Time and the Hour, vol. 9, no. 19 (April 15, 1899), pp. 6-7. Volk's portrait of Adler, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, was painted in 1896; see Felix Adler to Douglas Volk, June 1, 1896, Volk Scrapbook.

(13) Lord, "At the Home," p. 1.

(14) The property was the old Charles Hamblen farm. See H. Walter Eastman to Carrie Stow Waite and Marion Larrabee Volk, deed dated July 6, 1898, Oxford County Deeds (Western District), vol. 83, p. 277, and vol. 85, p. 497; vol. 86, pp. 311, 376; and vol. 92, p. 386, Oxford County Registry of Deeds, Fryeburg, Maine. The Volks apparently extended and transformed an existing old farmhouse; see "Famous Persons at Home," p. 6.

(15) Lord, "At the Home," p. 1.

(16) Ibid.

(17) Ibid.

(18) Douglas Volk to Halsey C. Ives, February 3, 1904, Volk Scrapbook.

(19) Catalogue and Program, Handicrafts Ctr. Lovell (August 13, 1901).

(20) The whereabouts of the writing table and chair are unknown, but a photograph of them is in the Volk Scrapbook. See also Felix Adler to Douglas Volk, December 14 and December 28, 1901; and Frances Spellman to Douglas Volk, December 24, 1901, both Volk Scrapbook.

(21) The bench can be seen in a photograph of the interior of Hewn Oaks in Lord, "At the Home," p. 1.

(22) Sabatos Handicrafts: Classes in Wood Carving and Weaving, pamphlet, 1904, in the Maine Historical Society.

(23) "Karl Von Rydingsvard, Wood Carver, Dies of Burns," Portland Press Herald, May 3, 1941, p. 1.

(24) Sabatos Handicrafts: Classes in Wood Carving and Weaving.

(25) Quoted in Lord, "At the Home," p. 2.

(26) Douglas Volk, "A Word about our Home Rugs," Fire Fly, no. 1 (August 4, 1900), p. 5.

(27) Lord, "At the Home," p. 2.

(28) Ibid., p. 1. The Volks paid spinners and weavers 25cents or 30cents per square foot; for plain filling, workers received $1, and a $1.50 for the filling in of designs.

(29) See Rachel Weston, "A Revival of the Hand Loom," Good Housekeeping, vol. 33, no. 3 (September 1901), pp. 176-182. Lord, "At the Home," includes detailed information about the Sabatos rugs; and Frederick K. Lyons took numerous photographs of the rug-making processes at Hewn Oaks for Arthur Huntington Gleason, "A Rug-Making Community, Two Sides to the Arts-and-Crafts Movement as It Appears in a Maine Village: The Practical and the Aesthetic--Weaving and Dyeing the Rugs," Country Life in America, vol. 9, no. 4 (February 1906), pp. 411-414. See also Mildred Cole Peladeau, Rug Hooking in Maine, 1838-1940 (Schiffer Publishing, Atglen, Pennsylvania, 2008), pp. 85-105.

(30) The Sabatos Rug, p. 8.

(31) Lord, "At the Home," p. 2.

(32) Quoted ibid.

(33) Volk, "A Word," p. 6.

(34) Quoted in Lord, "At the Home," p. 2.

(35) The Sabatos Rug, p. 6.

(36) Ibid., p. 10.

(37) Volk, "A Word," p. 6.

(38) The Sabatos Rug, p. 8.

(39) A photograph of the prize-winning rug accompanies 1927 correspondence between Douglas Volk and Mrs. William H. P. Walker, Volk Collection, Archives of American Art, photocopy in the Maine Historical Society.

(40) Lord, "At the Home," pp. 1-2. According to Gleason, "A Rug-Making Community," p. 412, about twenty-five rugs were made in five years. A Sabatos rug that belonged to Percival Chubb is in the Maine Historical Society, a gift from his family. Several Sabatos rugs were sold in the Cyr auction.

(41) Alice Frost Lord, "'Hewn Oaks': A Glimpse of the Summer Home of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Volk at No. Lovell," Lewiston Journal, Illustrated Magazine Section, October 5, 1912, p. 2.

(42) Manuscript biography of Douglas Volk, c. 1906, p. 10, Volk Scrapbook. A photograph of The Woodland Maid, which was awarded the Shaw Prize at the National Academy in 1899, is also in the scrapbook.

(43) Lord, "At the Home," p. 1.

(44) For information on Hartley see Townsend Ludington, Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1998), pp. 42-43; and William J. Mitchell, Ninety-nine Drawings by Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) (Bates College Art Department, Lewiston, Maine, 1970), inno.

(45) Wendell Volk to Marion Volk, April 6, 1909, and Wendell Volk's resume, Lovell Historical Society, Maine.

(46) Alice Frost Lord, "Volk Summer Home at Lo[v]ell Is Devoted to Art Crafts And Hospitality--Built by Douglas Volk," Lewiston Journal, Magazine Section, December 9, 1939, p. A-1.

(47) Hewnoaks promotional brochures, 1940 and 1948, Lovell Historical Society.

ARLENE M. PALMER is a decorative arts historian and the curator of Victoria Mansion in Portland, Maine.

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