This poster by Katherine Milhous is valued between $1,000 and $1,500, according to staff at Swann Auction Galleries.
Even with tears and stains, this uncut proof of the Ephrata Cloister is valued between $700 to $1,000.
This Katherine Milhous poster proof of the Ephrata Cloister is valued between $700 and $1,000.
This poster, which seems to encourage reading of history, is one of the rarer of Katherine Milhous' Works Progress Administration posters, according to staff at Swann Auction Galleries.
The color bar and the hatch marks are still present on this poster, indicating that it is a proof, according to Nicholas Lowry, president of Swann Auction Galleries.
Through no effort of their own, Pennsylvania Amish and the Ephrata Cloister will be represented at Swann Auction Galleries' annual spring auction of Modernist Posters on Thursday.
Ironically, posters of these two Lancaster County groups, are being sold during an economic recession, and they were created during America's Great Depression.
The Works Progress Administration, established by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1936, paid artists to create the posters on a wide variety of public programs, from art to safety.
Not only were the artists getting paid but the artists, through their work, were subtly encouraging a more optimistic mood in the country, said Nancy Mata, Millersville University's associate professor of graphic and interactive design.
"What they were looking to do was make an uplifting movement that was positive for the country, to move the country out of the depression," she said.
Katherine Milhous, a Pennsylvania artist who attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, created five of the posters that will be sold on Thursday. They are dated circa 1936.
Her two Amish posters both include "Pennsylvania" written prominently in big block, sans serif type. One features a mother, father and son, the other an Amish woman. Both were created with elements of very early American art deco, according Nicholas Lowry, president at Swann Auction Galleries, New York, NY.
Mata described the posters as examples of the regionalist moment, a movement that was "looking for direct visual messages that appealed to the masses from a regional perspective."
The regionalist movement, Mata said, was a reaction against the ornate classical art that was being taught and created in Europe, she said.
The posters are estimated to bring between $700 to $1,000 or $1,000 to $1,500, each.
The style of the two Cloister pictures is significantly different, Lowry noted. The title "Ephrata" is written in very ornate lettering, perhaps reminiscent of Frakturschriften, German calligraphy used at the Cloister.
At the time the posters were created, posters were not considered art, Lowry said. Today, however, Milhous' work would definitely fall into the realm of art and in the realm of design and illustration, Mata said.
The other poster created by Milhous that is being sold is one that appears to encourage the reading of history.
Milhous went on to become an illustrator of children's books, including "The Egg Tree," a 1951 Caldecott Medal book, "Lovina: A Story of the Pennsylvania Country, Snow Over Bethlehem." She also illustrated "The Silver Pencil," a 1945 Newbery Honor book. She died in 1977.
According to the Library of Congress, 2,000 WPA posters are known to exist. The library owns 908 of them.
No one knows how many still exist, nor how many copies were made, Lowry said. The posters were not considered art when they were made, he said, though they now are considered "rather exceptional works of art by themselves."
E-mail: lespenshade@lnpnews.com