It will come as a very considerable surprise to many people to learn that creative arts and crafts in America arose first, and were for a long time almost exclusively carried on by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

The Puritans who came to America from England had little or no background in either the practice of the arts or their appreciation. Their austere religion forbade it, and it was a century or more before art could find any hold in the cold and hard nature of the Puritan. Even in furniture made by John Alden at Plymouth there was the most rigid severity, expressing the Puritan's extreme reaction against the softness and the sensuousness regarding which he was so morally obsessed.

In the South the planters, living in lux-ary through the labor of slaves, had little urge to create, because they had money enough to import from Europe what they wanted, and while they were less inhibited than the Puritan, they had no other thought than to accept ready-made the arts of Paris, London and Rome in the grand style of the time.

With the Pennsylvania Dutch it was again different from either New England or the South. While the Dutch were strongly religious, most of their religious sects were quite humanistic. That is to say, their worship and their religious ideas did not, more than slightly, interfere with artistic creation. Their per- sonal clothes were drab, it is true, but this was the only severe restriction their religions imposed on color and line and form. In fact, this very deprivation had its effect in heightening their interest in color and design in other directions. Instead of decorating their persons, they decorated their household goods. Instead of expressing their temperament in religious excess or in profligate conduct they expressed it in music, simple dancing and in artistic craftsmanship of many kinds. While the gay planters of the early South were hunting foxes or betting on horses; while the Puritans in New England were so strongly bent upon grim religious controversy and persecution that a Massachusetts girl of the time refused to marry because she was too absorbed in theological debates--all this while the Dutch were living a humanistic life while they gave religion, art, industry, food, sex and other things a fully measured degree of attention. No early Colonial people lived a more balanced instinctive, creative life. The few religious extremists sects among the Dutch soon tapered down their extremism; only one cult was ascetic, and yet even it added lustre to American printing art.

It is important to remember that while the Puritans repre- sented a reaction against the extremes of tolerance in England, the Dutch represented a reaction against the extremes of intolerance in Germany-a very significant difference.

The Dutch were inherently meliorists (moderates, humanists) in philosophy; they did not care to deny the instincts of man, and therefore their creative urges and drives were not blocked and balked-as were the Puritans'; nor were they willing to live on the economics of slavery and dull their conscience and their creative sense, as did the Southerners, by slave-made luxury.

In this they were one with their good neighbors the Quakers, for the Quakers were also vigorously against slavery and more interested in "perfection" than in "sin," which was the Puritan obsession. The Quakers themselves had some creative artistry in them, as the great Quaker painter Benjamin West, early demonstrated. So the Quakers and the Dutch (about half-and-half in Philadelphia) helped to make that city, as Prof. Charles A. Beard says in his Rise of American Civilization "the most tolerant and secular city on the continent ... a combination of wealth, philanthropy, and moderation promoting intellectual activity of a humane and realistic character . . . the scientific center of the colonies." Among its many contributions to humane arts-Philadelphia set up the first city park system known in America (1682), and the first botanical garden (1705).

Philadelphia also organized the first labor union (1724) ; the first public library (1727); the first dining and fishing club (1732), the first society of science and learning (1743), the first hospital (1751), the first scientific expedition (1753), the first cartoon (1754), the first night school (1762), the first ob- servatory (1763), the first medical school (1765), the first permanent theatre (Southwark Theatre, 1766), the first American play (1767), the first daily newspaper (1784), the first anti-slavery society (1774), the first bank (1780), the first free dispensary (1786), the first steamboat (Fitch, 1786), the first stock exchange (1790), the first law school (1790), the first art school and society for advancement of art (1791), the first state road (1792), the first municipal water works (1799), the first art institution (Pennsylvania Academy 1805), the first lithograph (1818), the first horticultural society (1827), the first public high school (1836), the first daguerreotype (1839), the first American grand opera ("Leonora," by Wm. H. Fry, 1845), the first college for women doctors (1850). These items are important to mention because Philadelphia was half Dutch in those years, and the Dutch were active in a great many of these types of cultural advancement. I do not mean, of. course, to claim all these "firsts" as coming from the -Dutch; perhaps more than half were due to the Quakers. But full fairness certainly indicates that the Dutch had a very large share in them.

It was in the practical and applied arts that the Dutch shone so decidedly; and due in part to this influence Philadelphia is today the greatest national center in applied art. The Dutch did not write poetry or fiction, or paint portraits or compose music. These arts are always the products of a finished, not a beginning civilization. The Dutch were building a new civilization, and their creative art took that most authentic and sig- nificant of all art forms--the making of beautiful things to use in daily life.

The principal notable artcrafts of the Pennsylvania Dutch consist of (1) pottery; slip-decorated ware (sgraffito ware), (2) furniture, (3) glassware (4) fractur work.

Today the place of these Pennsylvania Dutch artcrafts of the colonial period stands extraordinarily high. The Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia and other institutions have permanent exhibits of them, and speak of their "important cultural contribution." Authorities agree that in period craft Pennsylvania Dutch ranks with the four or five most notable periods of all times, such as Tudor, or Empire.

Southeastern Pennsylvania has much red shale and red clay, and this gave the Dutch artisans their opportunity, very soon after they had settled on their farms and cleared the land. It was a practical urge tn for they needed crocks, pots, baking dishes, etc., for their food manufacturing activities, also tile for roofs. Red tile roofs have lasted for centuries in this district. Very soon the clay potters were making platters and pots, and it is then that their artistry flowered, for they were not content to make things without decoration, dating, signing. They took a genuine artistic attitude toward their humblest creation. There exist platters dated as early as 1733, sugar bowls dated 1742. They must have been made 25 years earlier still. Hundreds of little potteries were established in the century before the Revolution, and they were active until about 1840.

Their work is not equalled today by any potters in America. The rich red-brown glaze, the slip-decoration in characteristic green, yellow and black, the curving designs, humorous, pious, representational, the sentiments and quotations carved on in high German or just plain Dutch-all combine to make the pottery of the 1733-1840 Dutch period a high order of collection value. They are rather scarce now and highly prized. The hands of most modern potters have lost their original cunning, although the Stohl Brothers at Lionville retain some of it. Earthen milk pans, large cream crocks, small crocks, pie plates, hanging baskets, bowls, sauce dishes, sugar bowls, in many sizes and varieties were produced in those earlier potteries, some with a trace of Indian, some with a trace of Greek design, but most with that best of all basis of design-human usefulness.

Artistically considered, the ornamented earthenware of the Dutch potteries follows the lines of earliest known European potteries, and its "slip-decoration" or "sgraffito" which was developed in Southern Europe, particularly in England and in Italy. As the Romans inaugurated slip decoration during the time that there was a large Roman colony in the Palatinate on the Rhine where the Dutch came from, it is fairly clear that the Dutch sgraffito ware derives from early Roman days. France copied the art from the Germans, and so did England. The sgraffito or slip-decoration method is to trickle liquid clay of various colors through a quill attached to a cup, over the sur- face of the freshly molded and unburned clay utensil, thus producing designs. The liquid clay is of a different, finer and lighter color than the coarse clay of the utensil. The results, when the clay is burned, is remarkably fresh and attractive. Slip-engraving is another treatment, consisting of entirely covering the outer surface of the utensil with the slip clay, and then etching on it the design. The Dutch in America added new values to the art, including the use of a vivid green by means of copper or verdigris, and neither the French or English imitators of the German slip decoration, nor even the late German work, equalled that of the Dutch in America.

The pie plate, or poi schuessel was the most general article of sgraffito work, and the most widely distributed. The pie has always been a great favorite of the Dutch, sharing this preference with New England, and like New Englanders often eating pie even for breakfast The Dutch, as I have shown elsewhere, made a wider variety of pies than any other group in America; and since it seems authentically established that the pie (not meat, but other pies) is quite distinctly an American institu- tion, I think it will have to be conceded that the Pennsylvania Dutch deserve top place in this development. The New Englander did not know as wide a range of pies as the Dutch.

The reason why the sgraffito poi schuessel or pie plate of earthenware was so much used was because of the Dutch ovens so generally in use. When the Pennsylvania Dutch hausfrau baked her bread on the Dutch oven hearth, she was able, without any additional fuel cost, to bake pies also in the same oven at the same time. Tin pie plates being scarce or non-existent in the early days, her need resulted in earthen pie plates; and her collection of poi schuesset became a source of pride to her. The potter took note and slip-decorated the pie plates. There are some splendid collections of these plates, the best ones being in the Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia.

We may pause here to speak of that remarkable artistic obsession of the Dutch over the tulip. The tulip motif appears positively everywhere in Dutch art--even on the barn designs and on the walls. Of course the sgraffito poi schuessel are resplendent with them. They even named after the tulip one of the best known streams in Pennsylvania (on the banks of which I was born), the Tulpehocken-the words meaning, heaps and banks of tulips.

It has interested many researchers to know why the Dutch were so strongly obsessed with the tulip. jacquemart in his history of ceramics shows how the English, too, in copying the sgraffito pottery arts of the Rhine Valley Germans, also kept and widely used the tulip motif they had noted in German ware. He traced the origin to Persia. In the Persian language the tulip is the symbol of love, and in the Persian King's palace at lspahan was a tulip-decorated vase inscribed to show that he had taken the tulip as his emblem. There were "festivals of the tulips" held there; and it is believed that Konrad von Gesner brought the tulip to Augsberg, Germany, in 1559, where it achieved quite remarkable popularity. From there it traveled to the Holland Dutch, who then became-and are still "obsessed" with it. (A general financial panic was caused there in 1637 by tremendous speculation in tulips). A considerable part of the Continent had "tulip madness," and of course the Pennsylvania Dutch of the generation which first came to America were also strongly marked by it.

The German potters of the Rhine Valley had put the tulip into pottery even before the first groups came to America. What is more natural that they should use their favorite flower in decoration, especially since the outlines of the tulip were so essentially simple and so rich in line? Tulips, tulips everywhere- that suited the Dutch perfectly My grandmother never failed to thrill at her rows of brightly colored tulips each spring. If any proof were needed that Dutch interest in tulips derives from Persia it would be found in the fact that the Persian name for tulips, dultaban, is easily recognizable in the Pennsylvania Dutch name for tulips, dulleben. The d and t are here, as so often in German dialects, interchangeable.

The Dutch tulip design has been found on about 35 different objects of decoration, beginning with barn designs, and continuing on to pottery, inlaid designs on wooden bridal chests, etc. Even waffle irons, cast iron, stove plates, and bed posts were molded to the tulip design.

The Pennsylvania Dutch, it should now begin to be clear, were virtually the only people in America in Colonial days who had a strong, imaginative feeling for color and design; for creative art in their households, and even on such earthy objects as their barns, fences, wagons and weather-vanes. Why was this so? It is really important to know. Edwin Lefevre in the Saturday Evening Post explains the matter in part. He says that all during the Middle Ages and on into 1500-1600 the homes of people were necessarily dark and gloomy-because windows had to he few and small, to conserve heat, and these were covered with wooden shutters or parchment, which further dimmed the light. So being a color-loving people the Palatinates painted their furniture gaily, to bring more cheer into the darkish homes. As sheet glass for windows became more commonly used and increased the light in their homes, their excitement over in- terior decoration increased, and stimulated them to pay still more attention to furnishings. If they couldn't be sumptuous, they could easily be made colorful. Another significant influence was that having left the Catholic church, where the longing for rich color and high decoration is satisfied in gorgeous church interiors, these Dutch ancestors very naturally turned toward their own homes instead of to churches. In fact some sects (Amish, for instance) refused to use churches at all, gathering in each other's homes to worship. The home was the real Dutch temple to be made beautiful and colorful-this is the nub of the whole matter. To the Dutch wife the house, and to the Dutch farmer his barn, wagons, gates, etc., were the heart and center of their emotional interest-so they glorified them.

It is worthwhile"to stop for a moment to consider the Dutch barn and the symbols painted on them. The Pennsylvania Dutch barns themselves are something to note. They are very large, roomy, efficiently designed, and invariably painted a bright warm red, with one of the many peculiar symbols which were traditional-symbols which from mediaeval times were put on barns to keep the lightning away and also the "hexes" (witches) who were believed to make cattle sicken and die. These barn symbols include four-leaf clover, tulip, "wheel of fortune," pomegranate etc. No one who has seen these giant, well-kept red Dutch barns, representing granaries of plenty, will ever forget them. Nowhere else in America are barns so attractive and colorful.

The Dutch, as you see, used art; it was not some esoteric thing apart from them. On a Dutch farm you worked in a colorful barn, lived in a stone house built for the ages with a motto carved under the eaves, ate pie out of an etched pie dish, and other foods cooked in a stove which had artistic original design, kept your linens in a museum-piece chest, dipped sugar out of a museum-piece sugar bowl, skimmed milk from lovely red-ware made on the potter's wheel, walked on rainbow-like rag rugs, slept under artistic bedspreads of original design, drank wine from museum-piece Stiegel glass or spatter-ware, had a birth and marriage certificate of hand-illumined fracture sang out of hymn books illumined with fracture and worshipped with bibles similarly illumined. You rode in wagons gaily colored, watched the wind sway originally designed weather-vanes atop the barn, and saw even the barnyard made resplendent by peacocks.

Fractur represents nothing less than the preservation into the modem age of the ancient and mediaeval art of illuminative writing-the very same which embellishes the title pages, chapter heads, or entire volumes of some of our most prized books of mediaeval days, now preciously preserved in museums. Until shortly after the turn of the century (1900) there still lived at least two Pennsylvania Dutchmen Uacob Gross and John H. Detweiler) who were masters of this art which was practiced and perfected in renowned cloisters of the Dark Ages. At Venice today the traveler is shown a quite priceless illumined book, the handiwork of Hans Memling, and this work by a Pennsylvania Dutch progenitor forms a direct link between this great art of mediaeval times and the hills and dales of Dutch Pennsylvania today.

For nearly two centuries this art flourished in Pennsylvania; the art being usually practiced by schoolmasters and clergymen who added to their meagre income in this way. Every Dutch person born before 1890, or even later, usually owned examples of the work of these fractur artists, for custom dictated that everybody should have a birth, marriage. or death certificate in fracture Bibles and hymn books were also often illumined with fracture As the practice declined the artistry declined too-so that the older the fractur the higher is its quality. The Ephrata colonies of Pietists were the most expert in fracture.

Certificates of birth were called laufschein; certificates of marriage eheschein; and certificates of death todschein; samplers of writing vorschrift. Fractur was done with pen and brush, on paper often with a border of reds, greens or blacks, with a wide range of design, inclusive not only of the ever-present tulip, but also equally popular birds, angels, etc. Wall texts, book-markers, manuscript collections of hymns, etc., were all made into art treasures for the family by this fractur work. The old Dutch illuminators made black ink out of burnt grape vine twigs, red from lapis, and the old Tyrian purple in various ways. They used quills from geese, ducks and crows.

Splendid examples of it are in the Pennsylvania Dutch wing of the Metropolitan Museum and in the Pennsylvania Museum. Prof. Cornelius Weygandt has a very rare piece of 1726 fracture on linen paper mellowed with age, illuminating the first twelve verses of the 84th Psalms. It abounds in dark purples, reds, greens, maroons and black lettering. Many collectors have found fractur most artistic and delightful. And now in 1935 smart New York City is going in for illuminative writing quite in the same manner as the Dutchl Olive Frances Rhinelander in New York has mastered the art and is making birth and marriage certificates for the New York's elite, who seem to prize Eheschein (marriage certificates illumined) quite as much as every Katy and Rosa in Dutchland has prized it for 225 years pastl The guiding impulse of the Dutch was to enliven and decorate their daily existence with color and line. The Dutch dearly loved their homes, and you have to travel with sharp eyes indeed in Dutch country to see tumble-down, disheveled homes such as are so disheartening to see in so many other parts of the country. The great stone houses of the Dutch would have been repellently drab if the stone exterior was not invariably white- washed, and the exterior woodwork painted blue. Inside the walls are also often painted in pink, blue and yellow, and the colorful earthenware glass and chinaware is everywhere about. The Dutch simply refused to live among drab color&--despite their refusal to bedeck their own persons in color.

Even the mirrors of the Dutch 'were decorated; often indis- criminate colors, but still keeping alive the "gaudy Dutch" color sense which was in the twentieth century to become a general movement among the sophisticated to use more high color in decoration. If the Dutch had been painters in oil they would surely have spurned the "brown gravy" school of painters of mediaeval times, and favored the modern artists like Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, Monet, Renoir, ets. They liked high color and didn't care who knew it. About a hundred years ago England, realizing this, made up special high-colored China-ware called "gaudy Dutch" to catch the trade of the Dutch in Pennsylvania-and now a great many very sophisticated, artistic people like nothing better than to have some of this "gaudy" Dutch ware for decoration in their homes. This machine made ware from England unfortunately resulted in driving out local potteries.

The Dutch also went in for enameling and etching in color on glass. Bottles, pitchers and bowls were made, using the inevit- able yellow, dull red, green and white (so often the colors used by the Dutch). On these they would-as everywhere else, even on pie dishers--letter mottoes and sayings, such as "Mein hertz sei dir ergeben so lange werde mein leben" (My heart is thine as long as my life lasts). At Spinnerstown, where David Spinner did much important work in Dutch ware, many of this sort were made.
By all odds, the most highly artistic of all the Dutch ware was Stiegel glass--now famous the world over. Baron William Henry Stiegel was a highly picturesque figure and a real artist. He came from Germany, established an iron works and the first glass factory in America, in 1762, at Manheim, Lancaster County. He made glassware of unexampled artistic merit, with a richness of color, a bell-like ring of rare charm. He was a picturesque figure, riding about with coach and six white horses, each with plumed white head-dress. He gave land to a church in 1772, for a payment of five shillings and a red rose, annually-a payment still made today. There isn't a collector who doesn't prize the early Stiegel glassware, made in Gibbel's pottery in the .shape of perfume jars, decanters, sugar bowls, pitchers, etc. Stiegel glass was eagerly bought throughout the Colonies. It was the outgrowth of Germany's high development of glassware art, (brought from Syria during the Crusades), and the new art of engraving on glass, invented by her glassworkers. He used col- ored and clear flint and lead glass. He brought here workmen from England, Holland, Germany and Venice, and his glassware represented America's first real industrial and artistic superiority over Europe. Another artist of high repute in glassware in the Pennsylvania Dutch country was Caspar Wistar, and his ware is also now much sought.

The Dutch were the sole patrons in America of the spatterware of England a century ago, decked gaudily with peacock, rose and tulip; also of the Hanley and Tunstall lusterware, pink, yellow, red and yellow-now adding "luster" to many a sophisticated collector's home, but definitely inferior to the earlier Dutch-made"ware.

In still another art, the Dutch made colonial art history. Their cast iron stove plates, making even the common kitchen stove artistic, were used everywhere; and these are now collector's items. Between 1746 and 1790 Baron Stiegel put his proved art sense to work on these stove plates, as did Thomas Rutter and others, at the Elizabeth, Coleman, Windsor Furnaces. These stove plates were cast with relief designs of many varieties scenes from the Bible, the ever-present tulip and others. The Bible scenes depicted included Adam and Eve, Potiphar's Wife, the Dance of Death, Elijah and the Ravens, etc. Iron plates were also made to be built into the gable walls of houses, inscribed with pious sentiments or axioms. At Windsor Furnace, Berks, in colonial days one particularly artistic casting repre- senting Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" was made (now owned by the Philadelphia Exchange). Michael Hillegas, first Treasurer of the U. S. was the owner of the Martic Furnace at Furnace Run, where Revolutionary musket barrels, etc., were made. Also in iron the Dutch made very artistic locks, some very interesting examples being preserved when the old State House at Harrisburg was torn down.

To many people the most extensive and delightful of all Pennsylvania Dutch art is their furniture, ranking authentically with the three or four best known furniture periods. This furniture was at its best in the period from 1700 to 1850. Some of the earliest pieces were brought from Germany in ships, and then for a time, during the pioneer years, the furniture used was of a simple, heavily turned country style which has a stolidity and dignity all its own. The chairs and "settees"-some of these extraordinarily long for use on the verandas of country inns had a peculiarly rugged line, and were usually painted gaily and gaudily when new-but soon were worn to simple graceful line and form.

Some items of Pennsylvania Dutch furniture are very particu- larly picturesque-the painted dower chests and the corner- closets (eckshunks). Each Dutch county in Pennsylvania had its own favorite design for dower chests, which were made of pine or poplar and richly decorated. A Dutch tulip chest of the early period is a real collector's prize. Mrs. Robert W. De Forest's collection in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, consists of eight different county dower chests; each Dutch county being represented with distinctive decorative ideas. The Dutch dower chest is quite particularly an art accomplishment, Christian Selzer of Jonestown, and Johan Rank being the acknowledged master artisans of chests. The Berks and Lancaster dower chest designs are the most notable. A Dutch bride was always most prideful of her chest, filled with her own handiwork.

Mrs. Robert W. De Forest's collection of dower chests in the Metropolitan is most notable---each county having different decorations, as follows:

Berks-two unicorns rampart, composed within an arched panel, among tulips and pomegranates. Lehigh-geometric star, same as used on barns, to ward off unfriendly spirits.
Lancaster-sunken arches with parrot-like birds, and tulips and fuchsia. Daughin-two square panels, with vases filled with flowers.
Montgomery-square panels of tulips and carnations with geometric design plan.

The musical art of the Dutch is shown at its height in the Bacli Festivals at Bethlehem, which rank as first-class among international musical events, the May 1935 one drawing from 22 states and three foreign countries, and the great Philadelphia Orchestra participating. When one hears the Dutch singing their Lutheran hymns fervently one must know musical history to understand their beauty and origins. Bach, the great composer, composed beautiful choral preludes from the hymns the Palatinates sang, such as Erbarm dich rnein, O Herr Gott and Aus tiefer Noth schrei ich zu dir, hymns which were the last to be sung by the sorrow-stricken Palatinates in the Strassbourg Cathedral in 1681 before the French arrived to ravage their homes and kill, driving them out of their country to Pennsylvania. These preludes based on Palatinate hymns were played by the New York Philharmonic Symphony to enthusiastic audiences March 1935.

Dutch musical talent is also exemplified in Paul Althouse,Who for several decades has been a Metropolitan Opera star. Folk singing in groups is as old as the Dutch, and their spontaneous, joyous singfests rang through the colonial forests long before any other colonies let their voices out in anything but sedate hymns. The fiddlers and harmonica players of long ago made social life among the Dutch merry and agreeable, together with their country dances. Almost every Dutch village has had its band, and almost every Dutch farm house its parlor pipe organs; while not a few of the towns and villages have developed orchestras. The old country tavern square dances, with figures called out, quite as in pre-Revolutionary times, were continued until but a few years ago (at Eshbach, for instance).

The humbler Dutch craftsmen --- carpenters, cabinet makers, painters, ironworkers, etc. have long been known for their extraordinarily high degree of conscientious craftsmanship, making of their trade an art. The women, too, in their rug-making, bedspread making, etc. have shown exceptional artistry; their bed spreads in particular being sometimes works of art, many hanging today in museums in New York and elsewhere. Dutch design in general is greatly prized by artists. Design Magazine in March 1932 printed a wide variety of Dutch designs and motifs, and Antique Magazine in April 1932 gave over its cover design to a color reproduction of a particularly lovely colored bed spread (1848), one which also hung prominently in the Exhibit of Folk Arts on Fifth Avenue, New York, 1935.

As in so many other sections of America the art instincts of the Dutch have to a large degree succumbed to the machine age, and will now have to crop out in other ways than those of the past. Because the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is un- doubtedly America's foremost authority in art matters--and also a world authority, it is fitting to note what the authorities of this famous Museum say of Pennsylvania Dutch art. In the Hand- book of Pennsylvania German Galleries (1934) it says:

"The collection brings to the American Wing an artistic expression unlike any hitherto shown in our galleries. The distinction of these arts and crafts lies in the strong sense of design possessed by the Pennsylvania German pioneers, who, aided by a lively imagination and a love of robust color, evolved their own vernacular for self-expression .... Sentiment, love of nature and symbolism provide the key to the exuberant decoration lavished upon dower chest and bandbox, pie plate and birth certificate, fireback and sampler-indeed nothing was so trivial as to be scorned by woodcarver, painter, iron-caster or potter. The voca- bulary of the artist was drawn principally from nature-flowers, animals and human figures finding an infinite variety of treatment .... Dear to the hearts of the Pennsylvania Germans be- cause of its flamboyant gayety, the tulip on slipware, needlework and furniture seems but a nostalgic remembrance of the flower growing in far away garden and dooryard; set formally in threes it is thought to represent the Trinity. The heart, carved in chair cresting, pierced in iron trivet, molded on fireback, dekcted on chest and birth certificate, is a universal token of love. The unicorn and peacock are" survivals of remote traditions .... In general the furniture is distinguished by its massive scale and a faithful adherence in form to native German and Swiss prototypes. Pie plates destined to contain the succulent meat and fruit pies found on every well provided Pennsylvania German table are most frequently seen; those with elaborate designs were presenta tion pieces."

The Metropolitan Museum's researches into Dutch art disclose that the prized Dutch windsor chair owes its origin to the Tobacco Club formed by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701, when similar chairs were used. It also indicates that the word fractur used to describe the Dutch illuminative writing had its origin in the sixteenth century printing type known as Fraktur, a type which the illuminators copied frequently.

The Metropolitan Museum also immortalizes one of the most unique characters in Dutch history-Schimmel. His first name seems unknown-he was merely an itinerant artist whose habit it was to wander throughout the Dutch region, especially the Cumberland Valley. He asked only to be given board and lodging for a day or two and then in return he would carve out of wood fantastic birds and animals, and color them. With his homespun genius he interpreted the rnoods and manners of these animals or birds with the most fabulous and delightful raciness. This ragged Dutch artist of long ago now achieves permanent fame in the Metropolitan Museum's collection.

Another interesting point that the Museum's researches show are that the flintlock hunting rifles, with maple stock and brass patch box, which have long been known as "Kentucky rifles" are as a matter of fact Pennsylvania Dutch-made rifles. They were called Kentucky rifles because they were the kind preferred by Daniel Boone, who was born among the Dutch in Berks county oand learned to shoot with this kind of rifle. Naturally he took it with him to Kentucky later. "Such rifles played a leading part in winning the Revolution," the Museum authorities admit, because "they were the most accurately sighted, quick-firing and light in weight of all the rifles available." Their makers were Peter Brong, Frederick Tell and others.

I believe it is fitting to conclude with as good a roster as seems possible to compile of the old Dutch artisans whose work ranks so high, in a variety of arts.

Baron Stiegel, Caspar Wistar, David Spinner, Christian Selzer, John Selzer, Heinrich Otto, Jacob Scholl, Samuel Paul, Hubener, W. Shade, Gibbel, Moore, Vickers, Bacher, Herstine, Jared R. Haring, A. B. Haring, Headman, George Diehl, Nase, Bitting, Bergey, Medinger, Christian Miller, C. Gerlach, Jacob Ditzler, Adam Muller, Willoughby Smith, John Bell, John Headman, Cope, Schofield, M. Vebele, Shenfelder, Friedrich, Hildebrand.