Object Record
Images
Metadata
Object Name |
House Blessing |
Object ID # |
2006.4.2800 |
Title |
John D. Souder house blessing, 1941 |
Creator |
Souder, John D., 1865-1942 |
Place of Origin |
Franconia Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania |
Date |
1941 |
Material |
Wove paper, ink, watercolor |
Dimensions |
H-10.5 W-14 inches |
Description |
House blessing lettered and decorated by "John D. Souder \ Telford Pa. \ 1941." The source of the blessing is given as "Ephrata 1801". It is six lines written in brown fraktur lettering, with maroon capitals, under the title "Haus-Segen [House Blessing]" in larger fraktur lettering colored blue and yellow, with capitals colored maroon, green and yellow. The signature and date is above the title in English script. Vignettes of a variety of flowers and birds (and one flying angel) surround the text, colored with yellow, green, blue, orange, red, and maroon. |
Notes |
DVD transcription: 27.56:20 John D. Souder artwork --John is surprised to see some of John Souder's work in Clarence's collection. --John relates that "John D. Souder was a poultry dealer [who] lived across from the Indian Creek Reformed Church and had a lifelong historical passion. And when his wife died in 1937, [he] went full-bore into restoring fraktur. He had a very large sense of his own significance, but he was significant, too. And he had scrapbooks this high. The Schwenkfelders bought it, thank goodness. We have a bunch of his stuff, too. He claimed to eventually have done nearly 1,000 frakturs. And we're going to have a show on him, beginning late May 2001." --One of the pieces is centered around a typed text. Alan notes that the text is "on Dock." This sends John into an explanation: "Well, what he does is…he never did this twice. He did it auswendig. He repeated himself a lot, and he liked to use the term 'similitude,' that he got from the book of James. And he was a man who used the English language with no sure sense of the proper parsing of a sentence. But he would get into motion, you might say-certain colorful metaphors and imagery-and then throw it…he would sort of discharge this verbal discharge, and you knew what he meant, except you couldn't parse the sentences." --John adds that John Souder would sometimes do five or six pieces of art in a day. |
Provenance |
Made and signed by John D. Souder (1865-1942), Mennonite poultry farmer of near Telford, Franconia Township, Montgomery County, a member of Rockhill Mennonite Church. |
Source |
Gift of Isaac Clarence Kulp |
People |
Souder, John D., 1865-1942 |
Collection |
Fraktur |