Amish cooking, crafts and furniture are well known throughout the United States.
The Amish of Pennsylvania, also called Pennsylvania Dutch (a mistranslation of the German "Deutsch"), are known for their simplistic, old world country life. Amish furniture styles are rooted in the era of Amish immigration to America, from the late 1600s through the 1800s. This distinctive furniture style, with its Germanic influences and simple utilitarian aesthetic, is characterized by colorful folk painting, excellent wood and a sturdy 18th and 19th century farm style. Does this Spark an idea?
Basic Characteristics
A trip through the shops and galleries of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, will reveal Amish furniture's fine craftsmanship and basic characteristics. The Amish tradition's straight lines relate easily to the styles that ran contemporary to its development, mainly the colonial, Shaker, mission and Jacobean styles. Most pieces are made of straight lines, simple design, and either highly characteristic painted decoration or none at all. Woods are generally the distinctive black walnut, oak, tulipwood, and pine, and are either painted or finished in wax.
Chair Styles
Chairs of this style tend to feature arms that are either simply turned and straight or straight and flat. Chair backs are wooden, with a ladderback or slatback, or a solid panel back. The solid-back chairs often have painted ornamentation. Chair leg styles may also be straight, tapered or simply turned. The shape of chair seats are generally square, though occasionally you may find chairs with backs made of arrow-shaped spindles.
Table Styles
Similar to other early American or colonial styles, table feet include the ball foot, the bun foot (rounded but flat on the bottom), continuation of the leg with no change in the line, or a simple rounded wooden foot. Table lines tend to be S-curve or straight. Underbracing is basic and not overdone. The huge walnut sawbuck dining tables were individual to Pennsylvania. Their ends were curved to soften the effect of their large size, and the central rails were sturdily affixed by keyed end tenons.
Folk Painting
The distinctive Amish painted ornamentation was accompanied by carved, raised, recessed or framed paneling, stenciling and spindle -- a piece of wood that was turned, vertically split then attached to the front of chests. In Pennsylvania, hope chests were painted light blue, with painted accents that included vases of flowers, tulips, stars, birds, angels and unicorns. Fruit, flowers and birds were often stenciled against painted backgrounds of yellow, green or brown.
Sturdy Construction
Rural simplicity and utility are the guiding principles of Amish craftsmanship.
Amish furniture is distinctive for its size and sturdiness, and its large clothing and pottery cupboards are particularly heavy and large in scale, painted or finished naturally in walnut or cherry. The mission style is particularly heavy, its straight lines ending in square corner posts. Smaller items such as hanging cabinets, wall racks and salt boxes have also long been found in Amish homes. Painted examples tend to have floral or fruit motifs.
Tags: Amish furniture, straight lines, painted finished, painted ornamentation, particularly heavy, Pennsylvania Dutch