American Primitive = Pennsylvania Dutch

An interest in folkloric American design, particularly that of the Pennsylvania Germans, became a mid-century fad in the U.S.

Donald Deskey design

The imagery combines a European folkloric look

with southeastern Pennsylvania traditional arts.

Basic abstraction may have appealed to some

Metal Rooster Weathervane

but the imagery was soon taken over by a rural nostalgia, a kind of Colonial Revival mentality.

Fashion for folkloric images found its way to feedsack prints in the '40s and '50s.

Chickens on chicken feed sacks.

The interest in folkloric designs included the whole farm menagerie

The whole farm

and here the farmers themselves in a vintage dress

and curtains.

Schumacher's put out a Museum Collection of prints

picturing the trendy folk arts of the time

ships and plates (and a Confederate soldier at top right.)

Ships in bottles, duck decoys and iron trivets

Feedsack.

 If one couldn't afford authentic Pennsylvania German toleware or tinware one could buy curtain material picturing the must-have items.

Or make your own copies

1948 Jane Zook

The fad for what was called Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) was basic household design

from 1940 on.

Pennsylvania-Dutch quiilt dated 1953,

probably from a kit.

with folkloric fabric print on the back.

Pennsylvania Dutch quilted silk dress

by movie costumer Gilbert Adrian.

The modernism is hard to see through all the sentiment and nostalgia but it was there.