News
Fraktur Presentation
Date: 3/4/10
The Mennonite Heritage Center, 565 Yoder Road, Harleysville, invites the public to an illustrated program on Fraktur presented by Lisa Minardi on Sunday, March 21, 2010 at 2 pm. Fraktur is the colorful hand drawn “fractured” or broken lettering done by Pennsylvania Germans in the eighteenth through the mid nineteenth century. Fraktur lettering was often decorated with colorful drawings and symbols and is now considered a unique folk art. Ms. Minardi, assistant curator of furniture at Winterthur Museum, will trace the connection between European and American fraktur and also talk about her work with the fraktur collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Fraktur were drawn for numerous occasions, including birth and wedding records and as rewards for schoolchildren. Beautiful fraktur writing samples and alphabets were part of early Pennsylvania German education. These fraktur drawings were treasured and handed down through generations of families and today historical and art museums feature fraktur in their collections.
For the last two years, Lisa Minardi was one of the primary consultants on the re-cataloging of the Free Library of Philadelphia's significant fraktur collection. Their collection of over 1,000 pieces is considered to be one of the largest public collections and is now available as an online resource for studying the range of fraktur artists and styles.
Lisa Minardi has also cataloged the fraktur collections of Ursinus College and the Winterthur Museum. She is currently working on a major exhibition and publication on the furniture of southeastern Pennsylvania for 2011 at Winterthur. A graduate of Ursinus College and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, Lisa wrote her master's thesis on the Muhlenberg family of Pennsylvania.
No registration is required for the program. Admission is by donation. Visitors are also invited to tour the fraktur gallery at the Mennonite Heritage Center. For more information, see www.mhep.org, email: info@mhep.org or call 215-256-0320.