Pennsylvania German Arts and Antiques

Fersommling Time: Annual Pennsylvania Dutch Gathering in Berks County

"For decades, getting into Berks County's annual fersommling was tough to do."

"'You were almost waiting for someone to die so you could get a ticket,' said Richard H. Hassler, 76, of Heidelberg Township. 'At one time there was a waiting list of 250.'"

Read this article.

Another Off-Broadway Play about the Amish: "Rumspringa"

"'RUMSPRINGA', written and directed by Peter Zinn and featuring Jim Boerlin, C. S. Drury, Kirsty Meares and Micky Sumner, is a dark comedy that explores the desire in all of us to experience life outside our 'normal' lives. Several generations face their own lives during a Rumspringa rave in an Indiana cornfield filled with rebellious Amish teenagers."

Read this article.

More Excellent Pennsylvania Stuff at Pook and Pook

 

Image:  Pook and Pook

"Berks County, Pennsylvania, painted dower chest dated 1788, the lid and front profusely decorated with stylized tulip vines flanked by heart decorated ends, all on a green/blue ground, above two short drawers supported by bold ogee bracket feet, 30" h., 48¼" w. An identical chest in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is illustrated in Fabian, The Pennsylvania German Decorated Chest, fig. 221."

The Pook and Pook Auction is on February 6.  Pook and Pook is Here.

Andrew Wyeth: His Mother was Lancaster County Pennsylvania German

 

Image: AP

"Andrew Newell Wyeth was born in the idyllic Pennsylvania farming village of Chadds Ford in the Brandywine River Valley on July 12 1917, the youngest of five children. His mother belonged to a Pennsylvania German family from Lancaster County, and his father, Newell Convers Wyeth, was descended from a Swiss family that had settled in Massachusetts in the mid-17th century."

Read this article.

"Time " Magazine Says: Mennonite Movie is a "Masterpiece"

 

 

BAC Films International

It's not a Pennsylvania German movie. It's a Low German (Plautdietsch) movie. About Mennonites in Mexico.  And it's winning lots of film festival awards. 

Its American premier was at New York's Museum of Modern Art.  Critics love it.

The movie is Stellet Licht (Silent Light).  Award winner at the Cannes film festival.

The "Time" magazine article is here,

The New York Time's rave review is here.

To see this independent movie in a theatre, you will have to go to New York in January.  The New York theater is here.

 

 

 

The Mysterious Merkey House in Berks County

 

Image: Reading Eagle: Tim Leedy

"To some preservationists, a renovated log-and-stone house in Bethel Township is an historical treasure and possibly the oldest dwelling in Berks County."

"To others, however, the home holds no historical value and stands in the way of a warehouse complex that would benefit the local economy."

Read this article.

 

The Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley is publishing a letterpress broadside, today, in tribute to the printers who printed the Martyrs' MIrror book in the 1740s.

The Martyrs' Mirror book was printed at the Ephrata Cloister, in  Ephrata, Pennsylvania.  The Historical Society is also located in Ephrata, Lancaster County.

The Martyrs' Mirror is the largest book printed in colonial North America, and is often considered the most ambitious printing project of that era.

The book records the stories of Anabapatist martyrs in Europe, who were the ancestors of many Amish and Mennonite families here in the United States.

The broadside commemorates the beheading of Anabaptist martyr Hans Haslibacher, who was beheaded in Switzerland in 1571. 

The Historical Society is home to the William and Jemima Brossman Library and Research Center, and to the Theodore R. Sprecher Museum.

The Martyrs' Mirror broadside is here.

The Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley is Here.