Early Postcard of Schmitz-Horning Co. Wallpaper Pattern

By Janet Dodrill

On an eBay search for Schmitz-Horning Company items, I found this postcard portraying one of their bathroom wallpapers, a windmill pattern, from an early catalog (1909-1910).

Until this discovery, I was not aware of the postcard or the company’s attempts at the marketing of their wallpaper.

The postcard reads:
The Windmill
No. 605
A practical bath room decoration, made in Delft blue. Two sections, each 20 inches wide and 60 inches high. Must be alternated to match. Sold by the section
The Schmitz-Horning Co.
Panoramic Friezes
Cleveland, Ohio

It is postmarked Rochester, NY, 1909, with a one cent stamp. The eBay seller shipped it from Pennsylvania.

The Schmitz-Horning Company, a Cleveland-based wall covering manufacturer, was in business from 1905 to 1964. Co-founded by my great-grandfather, Hugo M. Schmitz, it was later run by my grandfather, Warren R. Schmitz.

Copyright article and images. All rights reserved. Not to be used without permission.

 

The Windmill, Schmitz-Horning Co. wallpaper pattern no. 605, postcard, front, 1909.

 

The Windmill, Schmitz-Horning Co. wallpaper pattern no. 605, postcard, back, 1909.

 

Schmitz-Horning Co. 1909-1910 catalog page, with wallpaper pattern The Windmill, no. 605.

Carl Fuchs Designed Schmitz-Horning Scenic Wall Pattern

By Janet Dodrill

Schmitz-Horning Company’s Old South 1930s-1940s scenic panel detail (Photo: Cooper Hewitt).

Carl Fuchs designed the Old South scenic wall paper pattern (1930s-1940s) for the Schmitz-Horning Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The color lithograph (chromolithograph) inks and (washable) paper used were of the highest quality. Old South depicted plantation life in early America, and included a steamboat and fox hunt. There were twelve sections, each approximately 40″ x 80″ in repeat pattern.

The company was co-founded and run by my great-grandfather, Hugo M. Schmitz, and after his death in the late 1930s, run by my grandfather Warren R. Schmitz.

I am almost certain this 1920s Art Deco decorative pattern, Dekorative Vorbilder (Decorative Role Models), which I came across on an auction site, is by the same artist.

Dekorative Vorbilder by Carl Fuchs, 1920s Art Deco decorative pattern (Photo: Liveauctioneers.com).

Carl Fuchs was also hired by my grandparents to paint an oil portrait of my mother, then a girl of eight years.

Oil portrait of Schmitz-Horning president’s daughter (my mother) by artist Carl Fuchs, 1939 (Photo: Schmitz family).

Resources:

Cooper Hewitt, Old South Scenic Panels
https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18431473/
https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18431471/
https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18431469/

Cooper Hewitt, Objects Involving The Schmitz-Horning Co.
https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18046573/objects/

Riverview Estate Auctions, September 27, 2015 Auction, Lot 0008B
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/41129637_1920s-art-deco-dekorative-vorbilder-print-carl-fuchs

Copyright article and images. All rights reserved. Not to be used without permission.

Schmitz-Horning Company’s Old South scenic panel, 1 of 12 sections, each 40″ x 80″, repeat, designed by Carl Fuchs (Photo: Cooper Hewitt).

Schmitz-Horning Company’s Old South scenic panel, 1 of 12 sections, each 40″ x 80″, repeat, designed by Carl Fuchs (Photo: Cooper Hewitt).

Schmitz-Horning Company’s Old South scenic panel, 1 of 12 sections, each 40″ x 80″, repeat, designed by Carl Fuchs (Photo: Cooper Hewitt).

Squaw Rock by Henry Church Jr.

By Janet Dodrill

Squaw Rock by Henry Church Jr. 1885, ink sketch by Janet Dodrill.

On a walk down a path at the South Chagrin Reservation known as Squaw Rock sits a mammoth-sized rock on the bank of the Chagrin River that was carved by an artist in1885. That artist was self-taught Henry Church Jr. (1836-1908), American primitive painter and sculptor, but blacksmith by profession, from Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Squaw Rock’s formal name is ‘The Rape of the Indian Tribes by the White Man’ and it stands 30 feet high. The carving includes a woman (squaw) surrounded by a snake, a baby (papoose), skeleton, eagle, shield, flag, hatchet, arrows, and dog.

I read somewhere once that Henry used to secretly travel to the carving site by night, working by lantern, in hopes that the rock would be ‘discovered’ one day and believed to be carved by Indians, but I cannot locate the posting again to support this.

In recent years it has been vandalized and damaged. The squaw’s face and breasts have been defaced, and nature has taken its course and the stone face has deteriorated. After Church died, WPA (Works Project Administration) built a base under the rock to protect it from the river. I remember going there as a child, and even though my father was an avid photographer then and I so in more recent years, we have no early photographs, or any for that matter, of the rock at all.

In 1999 I visited the rock and did this ink sketch, as a result of an organized ‘hike and sketch’ event by the parks, which I participated in with my later mother and father who also appreciated his work.

Church carved a lion with a lamb for his own funeral stone, which is currently on long-term loan at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and pre-recorded his own funeral sermon on a wax gramophone cylinder. Though most of his painting were destroyed by his daughter after his death, he is also known for his painting The Monkey Picture (28″ x 44″, oil on paper, mounted on oil cloth, 1895-1900) which is on permanent collection at Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center.

Sources:

The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=CHJ

AskART
http://www.askart.com/askart/c/henry_church/henry_church.aspx

Antiques & Fine Art Magazine (The Monkey Picture)
http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/articles/article.cfm?request=836

The Sculpture Center, Outdoor Ohio Sculpture Inventory
http://oosi.sculpturecenter.org/items/show/945

Photos of Squaw Rock:

The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio
http://photos.cleveland.com/plain-dealer/2013/11/squawjpg.html

CarCow.com, The Famous Squaw Rock
http://www.cardcow.com/44282/famous-squaw-rock-chagrin-falls-ohio/

South Chagrin Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks
http://hikingohioparks.com/south-chagrin-reservation-hiking-ohio-parks.html

Old Cleveland Postcards

By Janet Dodrill

Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, postcard

Recently, by going through family photos, albums and scrapbooks, these three old Cleveland postcards of Euclid Avenue, University Circle and the Hollenden building, were discovered, passed down through our family. I love old Cleveland pictures, and it is even interesting seeing the written correspondence and stamps on some of them.

People crave nostalgia, and Clevelander’s enjoy anything Cleveland! Progress in civilization changes things so quickly, which we can mostly tell by looking back.

I’ve noticed, working in the graphics industry, that back in the day of keylines, typesetting,

University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio, postcard

hand-lettering and illustration (for me it was 1970s through early 1990s), we strived to achieve a polished high end look that was difficult to manufacture by hand. Then when the desktop publishing-capable computers were introduced it seemed to be the answer to our hopes. We could generate clean text and grab clip art graphics. However, by the late 1990s fonts were being created with a hand-written or grunge look. Stock illustration was less sleek and more stroked and textured. We sought a more natural look from our computer layouts, and for the visuals to appear to be more authentic.

Hollenden Building, Cleveland Ohio, postcard

I have found a similar comparison with the direction of cameras and photography. Over time we have made many improvements to cameras and photographic imagery. From tin to plates to film to now digital cameras with ever-increasing megapixels and other features. How ironic that we get software and app filters to give us an old sepia tone or vintage look.

The innovative Instagram, available first, offered a multiple digital image filter app that could be applied from a phone or tablet and posted on the world wide web for millions to see and took off in popularity. And there are many more other apps that now do the same thing, most recently Twitter and Flickr.

Seeing old postcards is still special. That is when the imagery was the best it could be. It brings us back to a time when we had other priorities. You can just tell by these postcards that the fancy architecture shown would have drawn visitors to Cleveland, and that people were out catching cable cars, operating their horse-drawn carriages while going downtown to shop or work at their businesses, and other things of the day. It starts-off our imaginations when we look at them.

Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, postcard

University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio, postcard

Hollenden Building, Cleveland, Ohio, postcard