Fraktur art of western Pennsylvania.(Museum accessions)

Fraktur is the term used in North America for the decorative and embellished documents that were produced mostly by teachers and ministers in German American settlements in Pennsylvania, but also in Maryland, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and in Canada as well. This folk art was popular from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Pennsylvania Germans, especially in rural areas, had set up their own schools under the auspices of various churches, and it was there that the making of frakturs flourished. After the Pennsylvania legislature agreed to create common schools in 1834, the number of German schools dwindled and so did the art of fraktur making.

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Besides the three Rs, children in the German schools were also instructed in singing and scripture, and poetry and drawing often had a place as well. The frakturs produced were most often birth and baptismal certificates, but there were also writing samples, genealogical charts, awards of merit to promising students, New Year's greetings, and various other forms. As decorative as they are, the purpose of these lively and cheerful works was primarily official or commemorative. They were rarely displayed; rather their owners most often stowed them in their Bibles or in boxes for safekeeping, which accounts for their colors remaining so bright.

Interest in collecting and studying frakturs began around 1900. It was not, however, until 1986 that anyone addressed the frakturs made in Westmoreland County and elsewhere in western Pennsylvania as a group. That year Lynn A. Brocklebank, then a student at Winterthur, published an article in the January issue of this magazine, in which she identified from a survey of 120 works, eight artists by name and one other unnamed but with a recognizable style. Many of these frakturs had been collected by her parents Joy and David Brocklebank. Since ...