Pennsylvania fraktur.(various artists, Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center Pennsburg, PA and York County Heritage Trust, York , PA)(Brief Article)

Two exhibitions of fraktur taking place in southeastern Pennsylvania, where this art form flourished, present many examples that have not previously been on view, making this part of the state a rewarding destination for folk art enthusiasts this summer. The first, entitled Fraktur Treasures from the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center and on view at the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center Pennsburg, Montgomery County, until September 30, celebrates the completion of a new fifteen-thousand square-foot addition to this institution, which is dedicated to showing the history of the religious group known as the Schwenkfelders. Under the leadership of Caspar Schwenkfeld von Ossig (1489-1561), this small group had broken away from Martin Luther's followers by about 1526, and by the seventeenth century they were forced to worship clandestinely Some two hundred decided to seek asylum elsewhere and emigrated from Germany, via Dutch seaports, to Philadelphia in a series of six waves between 1731 and 1737. Once in America, they moved to rural areas in southeastern Pennsylvania, where they were able to worship openly.

The more than eighty-three frakturs in the exhibition are drawn from the permanent collection of about one thousand works, including Vorschriften (religious messages or writing exercises undertaken by students), Taufscheine (birth records), marriage blessings, bookplates, and drawings. In the 1770s these works on paper were quite formal and looked much like their counterparts in Europe; however by the 1780s Pennsylvania frakturs had become more colorful and the drawing more expressive. Between the 1790s and 1830s, known to aficianoados as the golden age of the fraktur, artists created imaginative compositions using a broad color palette. Among the more frequently encountered ...