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Nov 05, 2024

Folk art - Central European, Crafts, Decorative | Britannica

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In the heart of

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In the heart of Europe, two areas demonstrate special factors involved in the formation of folk culture: the Rhineland, where wine production provided a number of special objects and motifs; and the Alpine regions, which, though extending into several countries, share a pattern of living dictated by the mountain territory. The latter region, which includes several well-defined areas—such as the Appenzell in Switzerland, the Tirol in Austria, and the Alto Adige in the south Tirol, now a part of Italy—is rich in festival arts, ceremonial foods, and implements associated with dairying (even musical cowbells).

In France, The Netherlands, and Germany, the proximity of folk groups to sophisticated culture made its mark in the variety of products, high skills, and lavish decoration of such objects as furniture. Invention was devoted to new figural types, such as the hod carrier common to lower Germany and Austria; and events such as the Napoleonic Wars made a rather quick impact, as with the soldier motif and the appearance of handwritten and ornamented documents relating to military service. The mechanical genius that made the Germanic peoples leaders in the field of sophisticated automata found folk expression in innumerable animated toys, clocks, chimes, figures, and other gadgets. While the folk art associated with Paris itself is not to be ignored, the more easily analyzed French groups are outlying, as in Brittany, with its many-figured outdoor calvaries (representations of the crucifixion) and other enduring forms.

The tendency to separate British from other European folk arts is an oversimplification, for a number of forms are shared with northern Europe; for example, the famous horse brasses (circular harness ornaments often retaining ancient protective motifs), giant processional figures such as the Salisbury dragon, and the May tree, a celebrative decoration in pole form. England is a small country that industrialized rapidly, a factor that tends to shorten the folk art period. Some arts that required expanding technical skills, however, could develop as folk forms: for example, the printed arts (such as the broadside, or sheet printed on one or on both sides and folded) and the hand-propelled roundabout (later the mechanized carousel), which became increasingly elaborate. Tunbridge woodwork, of glued coloured strips, is merely one example of local invention. Among the well-known categories of folk art are the inn signs (both hanging and “effigy” signs), wrought iron work, and tombstones. Hebridean textiles and Highland plaids and sporrans (the pouch worn in front of the kilt) are also familiar products. Both Scotland and Ireland have interesting grave crosses bearing ancient symbols. Ireland, however, serves as a reminder that the creative urge of a folk group may not focus primarily on the visual arts; Irish folk art does not compare with the contribution to oral lore in that area. (The same may be said of the black folk minority in the United States, whose musical contribution was spectacular but whose visual art traditions were largely cut off.)

The colonization of the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries, stemming largely from Europe at a time when European folk art was flourishing, resulted in a second general area of major folk art development. This art can be divided into that of the United States (loosely called American folk art); Canadian folk art, which has much in common with that of the United States, with its scrimshaw, ship carving, and western pioneer art, but which also has products of its own (for example, French Canadian wood carving in Quebec); and Latin American folk art, which has quite a different character.

For the first century and a half, the art of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States may be described as predominantly folk. Although there were European imports and works produced by sophisticated American artists, they were generally a pallid reflection of the art then developing in Europe, and they made little impact on a people bent on making a home in a new world. The so-called Yankee ingenuity produced a wealth of material, sometimes reminiscent of European prototypes but often new. There were, for example, dozens of handmade lighting devices and many specialized contrivances such as the trammel, for raising and lowering pots in the fireplace, and the corn planter. Fresh decorative styles, special forms, and new motifs contributed to an art that, either in evolution or invention, was typically American.

American folk painting is outstanding. Although there was once a tendency to view as sophisticated the artists who closely followed European styles and as folk those who worked in the rapidly emerging American manner, many of the latter have become individually known creators of a valuable body of work and have taken their place in the history of American art, some no longer viewed as belonging in the folk category. The more typical folk product comprised thousands of portraits and scenes by anonymous or local craftsman-artists or itinerant painters, who provided a vivid, if often crude, extensive record of America’s ancestors and their surroundings.

As America advanced, a pattern of regional differentiation appeared, just as in Europe. In general, geographic isolation was overcome rather quickly, one exception being the sparse settlements of the Appalachian Mountains, where Scotch-Irish descendants maintained a handicraft tradition. People of varying origins, however, had brought to the “melting pot” of America their different art traditions. While they were often content with preserving a few objects and customs, some groups chose to maintain a separate identity, set apart by religion or national origin, and among them some fresh regional arts developed. The strict religious beliefs of the Shakers in New England and New York state, with their emphasis on simplicity, gave rise to clean, functional lines in furniture and architecture and to some psychologically interesting “spirit drawings” executed under the influence of religious visions. The Pennsylvania Germans (popularly called Pennsylvania Dutch) not only had a distinctive religion but clung tenaciously to the language and traditions of their native Pfalz (Palatinate, now in the state of Rhineland-Pfalz and in Bavaria), which in art included such crafts as fine painted furniture and such motifs as the tulip, heart, and vine. Thriving in the flourishing countryside of their new home, they produced a notable body of art: fraktur (embellished documents), painted wedding chests, decorated ceramics (including elaborate pieces created for special occasions), unique barns with exterior painted symbols (“hex signs”), pictorial embroidery, weaving, and other forms.

The American settlers who moved westward were again thrust into a folk situation comparable to that of their forebears, and a pioneer art developed. Saddlery was one of its important crafts; the covered wagon was its distinctive vehicle; and the board structures of mining towns and the sod houses of the plains were solutions to the problem of immediate housing. The flatboat and keelboat of the Mississippi River arose from specific navigational requirements.

The Southwest, including part of California, is an area apart, producing art distinct from what is often called “Western Americana.” There the architecture was influenced by the Spanish mission and adobe styles, and a Catholic religious art was encouraged among the natives, resulting in the carved or painted imagery of saints (bultos and santos) with a strong native flavour overlying the Spanish derivation. These arts are more allied with the Latin American (as may be seen in the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe).