Polychrome Paint Decorated Yellow Pine Chest, attributed to Johannes Spitler (1774-1837), Shenandoah County, Virginia

Proper front left foot is replaced.

The chest was reputedly owned in the early 20th century by three unmarried sisters living in the Valley of Virginia who were descendants of Johannes Spitler.  Once the last sister died, the chest was purchased at a local auction by their niece, who also was a descendant of Johannes Spitler.

Sotheby's New York, October 11, 2001, sale 7705, lot 309.

Wear to paint commensurate with age; significant loss to paint on top; paint not examined under blacklight; proper left front foot is replaced; a large portion of the front face molding is repaired with a putty/epoxy; the chest was overpainted and then cleaned down to the present surface.
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This blanket chest appears to be initialed, numbered and possibly dared by Johannes Spider (1774-1837), a furniture painter working during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Massanutten area of Shenandoah (now Page) County, Virginia, a region settled by Swiss and German immigrants relocating from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Ronald Hurst and Jonathan Prown detail in Southern Furniture, 1680-1830 (Williamsburg, 1997, p. 337) what little is known about Spitler.  He was born on October 2, 1774, the eldest of eight children of Jacob and Nancy Henry Spitler of Pennsylvania. He married Susanna Buswell in 1796 and followed his parents to Fairfield County, Ohio around 1807. In 1826, his father deeded him property, which he sold in 1835. He died in Ohio on April 18, 1837, leaving an estate which included a tall clock, a large chest, a small chest, an "old chair," three German books, an ax and a spade "found in chest of said Spitler." 

During the decade that Spitler was working in Massanutten, he ornamented a series of blanket chests and clock cases with the distinctive paint decoration for which he has become known. Hurst and Prown note Spitler's technique was relatively consistent. They write that he first primed his furniture with a coat of red lead paint, then applied the ornamental elements in lampblack, white lead, and more red lead, and finally applied a final coat of blue paint made from Prussian blue and white lead pigments around the decorative motifs. He used stencils, compasses and templates to incise outlines around his decorative vocabulary, which typically included geometric and naturalistic motifs as well as motifs inspired by German-American fraktur. 

This chest is representative of a style of painting favored by Spitler in which he used a geometric vocabulary comprised of squares, circles, diamonds and flowers also found on other German-American decorative arts of the period. He often initialed, numbered and dated furniture painted in this style. An analysis of his numbered and dated chests indicates he decorated about [twenty-five per year. Spitler probably decorated this chest, which he initialed "jSP" and numbered 59, circa 1798. Like other Spider chests, it features blue and white wavy decoration on its ends and an inscription comprised of initials (typically j in lower case and SP in upper case), a number, and a date (now illegible) separated by X's.

The chest appears to have been made by the same cabinetmaker who made two chests now at Colonial Williamsburg also having paint decoration attributed to Joh;U1nes Spider (see Hurst and Prown, no. 107 and fig. 107.3). As they note on p. 341, this maker's distinguishing characteristics include the use of thickly cut yellow pine components and plain cove moldings above the feet; base moldings secured with [wo series of pins, one driven into the bottom board and the other through the case sides into the lower part of the case, the planer pins with their ends cut off; lid moldings that are pinned into place; and the insertion of a vertical pin through the uppermost dovetail at each corner.

One of the Colonial Williamsburg chests mentioned above (no. 107) was sold by Sotheby's, Important Americana: The Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Henry Deyerle, May 26-27, 1995, sale 6716, lot 793 for $343,500, a record price for the form. A tall case clock attributed to Spider and inscribed "Jacob Strickler IS01 Johannes Spitler, Nommer 3" was sold in these rooms, October 25, 1986, sale 5534, lot 36 as the property of Don and Faye Walters.

For additional information on Spider, see Donald Walters, "Johannes Spider, Shenandoah County, Virginia, Furniture Decorator," The Magazine Antiques, October 1975, pp. 730-735.