Watercolor presentation fraktur of an owl Probably Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, circa 1810

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Flack, Holicong, Pennsylvania
Christie's New York, September 6, 1997, lot 308

"The Gift Is Small, the Love Is Great," American Folk Art Museum, 1995

Weiser, Frederick S. The Gift Is Small, the Love Is Great: Pennsylvania German Small Presentation Frakturs. York, Pennsylvania: York Graphic Services, 1994, p.113
American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, p. 225, fig. 195

Some minor discoloration of paper appears to have repairs across horizontal middle and across mid-line to bottom. Tiny loss in black wing area. Glue at top, otherwise free. Unlined. Horizontal crease at center.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Although birds were endlessly fascinating to the Pennsylvania Germans and served as models for worship in song, as some hymn texts attest, the birds on these frakturs reach beyond the normal array of songbirds and parrots they referenced. The presentation fraktur of a double eagle-or doppelte Adler in the dialect, and a distant kin bird to those on the Hapsburg imperial arms-is the work of David Kulp, whose frakturs are rarely signed.¹ Kulp was a schoolmaster in the northwestern townships of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a Mennonite community that dates to about 1726. In 1782 he enrolled in classes taught by schoolmaster Johann Adam Eyer, from whom he received a decorated Marburg hymnal in 1783. Kulp married Mary Landis and taught at the very schools in which Eyer had taught. There he made large quantities of Notenbuchlein, or booklets of musical notation, and bookplates for numerous hymnals. He also served as a scrivener, auction clerk, auditor, appraiser, and assessor.

Almost Siamese in their twinship, the eagles share feet and tail feathers. They were surely as delightful to the child for whom they were made as they are to the eye today. They were a meticulous tour de force for their artist, too, who patiently crosshatched feathers and drew countless leaves on stems bearing tulips and other posies.

The nocturnal owl, whose call was comfort to the insomniac, occupied dead trees that were left to stand in wooded lots just for its housing. The owls' diet of insects and rodents in itself made them esteemed. Not easily drawn, owls rarely occur in Pennsylvania German iconography, and the subject here, on a Franconia-Mennonite type of presentation fraktur by an unidentified artist, is as bright-eyed and startled as owls always seem to be. No clear attribution to an artist may be assigned it. -F.S.W.

¹ In 1995 Mennonite scholars John L. Ruth and Joel D. Alderfer identified a large body of fraktur made by schoolmaster David Kulp after significant writings in his hand were donated to the Mennonite Historians of Eastern Pennsylvania, Harleysville, Pa.