Featured JOHANNES SPITLER Blanket Chest

A Spitler chest is going on the sale block in 2 weeks, I'll be interested to see how that goes. The Spitler family settled in the Shenandoah Valley VA in the 18th century, they were Swiss/German Mennonites who were fleeing religious strife in Europe.
A farmer by trade, Spitler supplemented his income by building & paint decorating various furniture forms, mostly blanket/dower chests. He was a gifted painter and although many of his works have a modern art type quality to the decoration, this chest is more of a traditional germanic design. Birds & tulips are featured but, he DID slip in an inverted (upside-down) heart, perhaps a preview of what was to become a signature of his work. Painting traditional designs in a very unconventional way.
Estimate is 80k-120k

 

A couple of Spitler chests that are more fully developed decoration wise

 

Those later pieces were probably considered scandalously daring in their day.

 

And what is your guesstimate, on hammer price, James?

 

My heart!
They are so beautiful!

 

So, we can assume, James will be right in the middle of the bidding war!!! And they're WELL PAST MY pocket book, but ALL are LOVELY!!!

 

try this on for size...


https://www.freemansauction.com/auc...w-pine-blanket-chest/?lot=484560&au=4648&sd=1

 

Gorgeous, all of them.

 

Indeed, people were probably thinking, the DEVIL made him do it!

I don't know, I'll guess 225k hammer which would put it at 300k out the door.

No, I am not even registered, too rich for my blood plus, I need another blanket chest like I need another hole in my head.
Spitler was a BARGAIN 30 years ago, those days are LONG GONE!
Once the Abby Aldrich Folk Art Museum in NYC purchased/displayed one of his pieces,
that was THAT! Foo Foo people now control that market and they have deep pockets.

 

The Mennonite/ Amish community is different, no getting around that, I can see why they skedaddled from Europe back in the day. They made the news recently on the virus thingy, Sharyl Attkisson did a report on how they handled covid.
Their experience is being studied now by academics, interesting short video.

 

My husband was telling me about this video just a couple days ago..
Our biggest take away from it was how important it is to make sure to do your part on keeping local businesses and farmers alive, because when it comes to all these mega farmers, trucking, and manufacturing jobs shutting down and stores running out of supplies, the local farmers and craftsman is who is going to pick up the slack.

People are forgetting what community is

 

Serious hard-working folks and, at least one of them was a HELL of a painter back in the day.

 

Nice "upside-down hearts"

 

Yep, he was smitten with inverted hearts, no doubt.
It is not known if Spitler actually built the chests but, the construction details are very similar so he probably did.
He had zero formal training in paint/art so it is assumed he was a self-taught genius.

Another inverted Heart theme piece - Click to enlarge

 

And another - click to enlarge

 

I think it's worth pointing out the the maker of this video, "Full Measure" by Sharyl Attkisson, is known for pushing anti-vax conspiracy theories long before covid. Specifically, her anti-vax advocacy tried to link all vaccines, including traditional ones we were all given as children, to autism. Hopefully everyone here recognizes this supposed link as garbage. https://www.mediamatters.org/sincla...t-show-after-years-pushing-misinformation-and

So I would treat this video with the same skepticism I treat Saturday morning cartoons. Fun to watch (when you're 10) but totally unbelievable.

 

I think it's worth pointing out that Media Matters is a leftist organization committed to shutting down all opposing viewpoints. So I would treat anything from them with a high degree of skepticism as well. That said, let's try to keep politics off this site. I don't think any of us come here for that.

 

The fact remains that she did do anti-vax reporting, like it or not. And I didn't post the video, Mark, that was someone else. I'm all for keeping politics off this site.

 

Media Matters??????

Yes, I'll post the result when the sale happens, still 2 weeks away, they are looking for a big number on this chest.