Like many Pennsylvania German schoolmasters, Friedrich Krebs supplemented his modest income by selling a variety of illuminated manuscripts and broadsides. Fraktur bearing Krebs’s name appear between the 1780s and 1813 and in such profusion that Donald Shelley has demarcated distinct stylistic periods within the artist’s oeuvre.9 Early in his career, Krebs sold both fully manuscript certificates and those originally printed for Henrich Otto by the prolific Ephrata Cloister (fig. 3). Beginning in 1790, Krebs partnered with printers in Reading, Pennsylvania, to design a printed birth and baptismal certificate modeled after Krebs’s favored manuscript three-heart fraktur style (fig. 4).10 Other printers and fraktur artists throughout southeastern Pennsylvania quickly copied this design, cementing Krebs’s artistic legacy in the history of fraktur.11 During this decade, Krebs also experimented with cutting and pasting imported brocade papers onto his birth and baptismal certificates (figs. 5, 6). Unlike his three-heart certificates, however, Krebs’s decoupage style did not spread to other fraktur artists. With one exception, Krebs remains the only scrivener known to have employed this technique.

It is possible that Krebs’s upbringing in Hesse-Kassel, just north of Frankfurt, exposed him to brocade papers in his childhood. Frankfurt was a major trade hub in the movement of decorative papers from Augsburg and Nuremberg to Amsterdam, from whence they left for overseas markets.12 Frankfurt’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe memorialized his own delight in these sheets of paper with golden figures, reminiscing on his childhood in the 1750s:

Goethe’s sheets with “golden animals” had emerged after decades of stylistic and technological development in continental Europe. Following the popularity of marbled “Turkish papers” created in Venice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, printers in southern Germany in the late seventeenth century began to experiment with creating an array of colored, stamped, and marbled decorative papers for use as endpapers for books, drawer linings, and wallpaper.14 Germans of the period classified all such decorative papers beneath the umbrella-term of Buntpapier, or colored paper.15 Among these papers, one style was regarded as aesthetically superior to the others. The term Brokatpapier, or brocade paper, appeared in the 1690s in Augsburg and referred specifically to papers embossed with metallic foils. Depending on their decoration, these papers might resemble either intricate brocade textiles or the gilt-leather wall coverings popular throughout the seventeenth century.16

The creation of brocade paper drew upon techniques for creating embossed leather and wallpapers (fig. 7). A printer’s assistant first colored sheets of paper with broad, painterly brushstrokes. A striking red oxblood-based paint was popular in the early eighteenth century, but by mid-century other colors such as yellow, blue, and green became common. Meanwhile, the Formschneider (block cutter) had carved the desired pattern from a metal plate, which was cut either in a positive embossing to leave a gilt design on a colored background or a negative embossing in which the lines of the design itself were carved out, leaving a colored motif on a gilt background. Positive embossing was popular for figural scenes and negative for abstracted floral patterns (see figs. 5, 6). After the carved metal plate was warmed, a damp sheet of colored paper, primed with adhesive egg white and covered with the metal leaf, was laid on top. The materials then passed through the rolling press.17 Under its pressure, the metal leaf adhered to the raised sections in the paper and the unbonded leaf was later brushed off.18 These metal foils rarely included genuine gold and silver; rather, they were typically copper or tin alloys mimicking more expensive precious metals.19 As is evident on surviving objects, these chemically reactive lesser metals have frequently oxidized due to extended exposure to air.

As German laws required these specialized printers to register with their respective cities, they remain well documented throughout the period.20 Likely the most skilled and prolific printer was Johann Carl Munck of Augsburg (c. 1730–1794). His wares included the negative-printed floral designs that were more common at the beginning of the eighteenth century but remained in production throughout the century. Munck is better known for his figural brocade papers, or Bilderbogen, “picture sheets,” which were fashionable by the mid-eighteenth century. The most celebrated of Munck’s products was his famed 1777 trade scenes in eight rows (figs. 8, 9, 10). These sheets depicted dozens of vignettes of artistic and artisanal labor including wheelwrights, coopers, painters, sculptors, and others, a theme so popular that the sheets were frequently pirated even into the nineteenth century.21

The brocade papers printed by Munck in Augsburg are the only known source for Friedrich Krebs’s decoupage fraktur, assembled four thousand miles away in Reading, though the transatlantic movement of these papers is not well documented (figs. 11, 12, 13). Unlike inexpensive and readily produced broadsheets, brocade papers required specialized technical knowledge and equipment that justified higher prices, meaning that merchants could profitably export them to North America.22 Newspapers in British North America first reported the importation of “gilt papers” and “Printed Papers for lining of Rooms” in the 1740s, but advertisements for German speakers in Pennsylvania did not appear until later.23 German-language newspapers published in Reading first note imported “Gedruckten Papier,” or printed paper, in May 1793.24 Translated from German, this advertisement by the Scottish-American Thomas Dundas (c. 1734–1805), formerly of Philadelphia, announced:

Dundas’s advertisement provides insight on the importation of German decorative papers into the United States. That Dundas, a merchant of fine domestic goods, sold these brocade papers rather than booksellers, stationers, or other purveyors of printed wares is significant, highlighting both the elevated nature of these objects and their role not as stationery but as fine goods intended for use within the household. Additionally, Dundas’s phrasing of “printed paper” deviates from typical German and English terminology of the period, highlighting the mutability of language surrounding these novel decorative papers. As Dundas was not himself a German speaker, he likely relied upon the newspaper publisher to translate his advertisement into German, perhaps introducing the source of the error.26 Moreover, in previous advertisements in Philadelphia, Dundas had highlighted when his imported goods originated in London specifically, suggesting that his reference to the latest “ship from Europe” signified the brocade papers’ export from Amsterdam rather than England.27 As no other brocade paper suppliers in Reading have been identified, it is likely that Friedrich Krebs purchased his sheets from Dundas. That Krebs’s decoupaged oeuvre consists of a plethora of gilt flowers, birds, trade scenes, animals, and religious figures suggests that Dundas stocked a wide variety of such papers, which he recommended for “lining Parlors and other uses.”

Friedrich Krebs creatively interpreted Dundas’s suggestion for “other uses.” After purchasing these sheets of gilt paper, Krebs began embellishing his printed certificates. An unsold birth and baptismal certificate at the Newberry Library provides insight into Krebs’s technique (fig. 14). In short, Krebs would carefully excise individual figures from a sheet of brocade paper, arranging and pasting these onto the surface of a certificate. Locations in which watercolors accidentally spill over onto the brocade papers suggest that Krebs arranged and pasted the golden figures before watercolor illumination. The careful nature of Krebs’s cutting—by either scissors or penknife—is highlighted by the crowded nature of figures on the original sheets of brocade paper; great care would have been required to excise a figure without damaging its neighbors.28 Krebs did not necessarily maintain absolute fidelity to each brocade paper figure; on the Newberry Library’s trade-scenes certificate, for example, Krebs has separated a portraitist from his model, though he pasted both onto the same certificate (see fig. 12). Krebs universally preferred symmetry in arranging his brocade papers, balancing his favored bird and flower motifs on both sides of the heart-printed certificates and frequently positioning saints in rectangular frames at their corners (fig. 15). Krebs was also not averse to nationalistic imagery as he included turkeys and eagles grasping branches in a manner reminiscent of the Great Seal of the United States. The turkeys also offered an opportunity for playfulness: in one case, he balanced a female turkey with a male on either side of a certificate, a nod to the certificate’s role in celebrating and recording a family’s growth (fig. 16).

That Krebs first pasted his brocade papers is not to say that he neglected the role of watercolor. Rather, the relationship between brocade paper and watercolors is among the most striking aspects of these objects, highlighting Krebs’s exploration of the potential for interplay between novel decorative prints and more traditional watercolor illumination. At the most basic level, watercolors filled the spaces around the decoupaged prints, often forming a rectangular border and in one case providing a red ground for the entire certificate (fig. 17). Like many fraktur artist, Krebs primarily drew inspiration from the natural world, a preference that spilled into his foray into decoupage. In certificates with more overtly natural motifs, Krebs delighted in transformation and juxtaposition, cutting floral brocade papers into urns from which emerge watercolor grasses and vines, themselves sprouting brocade paper flowers elsewhere on the certificate (fig. 18). While the natural world inspired the most dynamic interplay between material media, certificates featuring Munck’s trade scenes more openly favored the dynamic brocade figures over watercolor illumination, relegating the latter to small flowers or to framing devices around each scene (see fig. 11). In the certificates that overtly foreground decoupaged brocade paper, it also becomes evident that this new material partly replaced the role of watercolor illumination. Scholars have long recognized that Krebs’s painterly talents were not as impressive as those of his contemporaries, and the pasting of printed figures saved Krebs time, and depended less on his painting, when preparing his many certificates for sale in southeastern Pennsylvania.29

While known period accounts of consumers’ interactions with Krebs’s decoupage fraktur exist in the historical record, surviving objects suggest delight in the artist’s technique. Young Goethe’s account, previously discussed, shows that children were charmed by the “golden animals” on brocade paper, and it is likely that American children were no different. Such is suggested by a decoupage reward of merit fraktur attributed to Krebs and today at the Winterthur Museum (fig. 19). This diminutive example, the only known decoupage by Krebs that is not a birth and baptismal certificate, was a reward from a schoolmaster to a child for good behavior or academic excellence.30 Its survival and the presence in Krebs’s probate inventory of piles of brocade papers, termed “pictured papers,” suggests that the artist had a steady supply of such papers throughout his life, utilizing them both in his birth and baptismal certificates and in the classroom.31 This decoupage reward of merit is matched by a similar object created in 1792 by Friedrich Ernst, a little-known contemporary of Krebs, who applied a brocade paper eagle onto a small fraktur presented to Barbara Schwartzwalder (fig. 20). Ernst, unlike Krebs, more delicately excised his image, articulating each individual feather and freeing the bird’s outline of jagged edges before pasting it and penning religious text. Ernst’s fraktur, like that of Krebs, suggests that decoupaged brocade papers appeared not only on the birth and baptismal certificates purchased by adults but also enchanted young German-speaking schoolchildren and played a wider, if unacknowledged, role in other fraktur genres.

In both the German American classroom and home, decoupage fraktur pleased the eye in melding materials both traditional and novel. Yet such objects also invite connections with wider Anglo-American fashions in the young United States. Scholars have long traced the emergence after 1790 of “Fancy,” an aesthetic movement that viewed everyday objects as offering opportunities for creative expression. Fancy marked a “growing receptivity to virtually every form of creativity rooted in the imagination,” as Sumpter Priddy has noted, and the term could be applied to an array of painted furniture, metalware, ceramics, textiles, or other decorative or utilitarian objects with surface details that displayed artistic creativity and emotion.32 Wallpaper was perhaps the most common type of Fancy decor, as technological advances in printing wallpaper in rolls rather than as sheets encouraged a greater range of non-repeating patterns and visual detail.33 As wallpaper and brocade paper had been linked since the latter’s origins in the seventeenth century, consumers also associated brocade paper with emergent preferences for Fancy, a connection explicit in period accounts.34

Makers and consumers aligned decoupage, too, with Fancy.35 Such is suggested by early nineteenth-century band boxes decoupaged by young women from rolls of wallpaper and, even closer to Krebs’s fraktur, a remarkable decoupage glassichord at Old Sturbridge Village embellished with golden brocade paper figures (figs. 21, 22). Such objects resonate with Krebs’s decoupage fraktur, and indeed it is possible that Krebs also decoupaged three-dimensional objects. The artist’s estate inventory notes the presence of band boxes followed by “stamp’t” papers, suggesting that the two were used together.36

Recent scholarship on ephemera helps us to understand the relationship between Fancy and the large corpus of Krebs’s decoupaged objects. Over the past two decades, scholars have increasingly addressed the materiality of printed objects previously overlooked. Those scholars tracing early nineteenth-century American collage and decoupage have marked period ephemera as objects that appealed to the transformative power of the individual consumer’s creative hand in cutting, pasting, and otherwise transforming them, rather than simply as reflections of the industrialization and the mass-production of prints. As such, prints of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century existed in what Christina Michelon has termed an “operative tension,” simultaneously objects of mass-production yet also items that consumers might personalize and remake via haptic interaction.37

Krebs’s decoupage fraktur finds a promising, yet also complex, position in such scholarship as “operative tensions” are multiply layered in the artist’s corpus. In his decoupage certificates, it is hardly difficult, of course, to locate the creative role of the artist’s imagination and hand; he artfully transformed each mass-printed brocade paper sheet and, through decoupage, arranged the images into playful scenes interacting with one another and the surrounding watercolors. Perhaps just as significant, as the designer of his mass-printed, three-heart birth and baptismal certificates, Krebs was himself employing decoupage as a means through which to transform the very mass-produced certificates that he had designed and coproduced with printers. Thus, while each decoupaged certificate was unique, each was itself the result of a time-saving technique that transformed the act of decoupage into one of mass-production.38 As such, Krebs’s decoupaged oeuvre sits only uneasily beside the work of the young, female amateur artists typically studied by scholars of period collage and decoupage.

Krebs’s practice of decoupage over a twenty-year period suggests that his wares were popular among German-speaking consumers besot with Fancy. To this point, a final question remains: as Fancy objects that delighted the eye through exuberant surface treatment, how did Krebs’s decoupage fraktur function within the German-speaking domestic environment? Unfortunately, a definitive answer remains elusive. The most common treatment for birth and baptismal certificates was folding and storage within a family bible or chest, keeping safe a family’s collective memory but also hiding fraktur from casual viewership.39 Yet here the highly oxidized gilding on Krebs’s decoupage certificates is valuable evidence. Exposure to air degraded the copper and tin alloys comprising these gilt papers, turning faux gold and silver to black; even the versos of such objects frequently reveal copper-oxide staining from the recto. Such corrosion contrasts with those brocade papers used as endpapers in books, a storage condition that ensured that gilding remained safe from exposure to air and preserved the sensitive alloy (fig. 23). Unlike these endpapers, the high degradation of Krebs’s decoupage certificates suggests that purchasers did not typically fold and store them within family bibles, although whether German American families framed and displayed these certificates remains difficult to determine.

How early German American families cared for Krebs’s decoupage fraktur remains a mystery, but clearly these objects accomplished something special in the eyes of consumers in southeastern Pennsylvania. In exhibiting the creative flourish of their creator’s hand as he wielded a penknife or scissors, arranged figures and ornaments around the surface of a birth and baptismal certificate, and illuminated their surroundings in watercolor, decoupage fraktur blended traditional Pennsylvania fraktur with an early nineteenth-century Anglo-American preference for decorative surfaces. Whether or not Krebs consciously exploited such emerging fashions among his German-speaking customers, we can still view him today as an inventive and astute entrepreneur who tapped into a burgeoning international trade in decorative papers. While his decoupage technique was not adopted by other fraktur artists, it saved Krebs time and elevated his products above those of his competitors by appealing to a wider cultural phenomenon. As on his decoupage fraktur, Friedrich Krebs creatively excised and rearranged the fashions and preferences of Anglo-Americans and Germans in both Old World and New, elevating fraktur to new levels of art and inventiveness.