1793 Christian Mertel Pennsylvania German Fraktur
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GUEST:
Well I brought in my four-time great-grandmother's christening certificate. That's pretty much all I know about it other than they lived in Pennsylvania, so I'm assuming it's a Pennsylvania Dutch piece.
APPRAISER:
Well we see the writing to begin with, and it's clearly all in German. And if you were living in Berks County, Pennsylvania in the late 18th century, you were speaking and writing German.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
So when did they come to America?
GUEST:
I believe it was mid-1700s, rather. Mid-1700s.
APPRAISER:
Okay, well, we actually can identify an artist here. Oh, my goodness. He's called the CM artist. It refers to his initials. His name was Christian Mertel, and he was born in Germany in the 1730s, came to America in 1773.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
So we know quite a lot about him. After he came to America, he became a teacher and a maker of fraktur, and that's what this is. And it was very, very popular in the German communities in Pennsylvania in the late 17th, early 18th century.
GUEST:
Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER:
The first thing we see, there's the unicorn.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And the unicorn was a symbol of good luck.
GUEST:
Okay. We also see a lion wearing a crown.
APPRAISER:
So that's a reference to old world, and his German roots.
GUEST:
Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
Up here: beautiful birds. So this is a joyful event. And you see that it's very early, she was born when?
GUEST:
1784.
APPRAISER:
1784. Date is right here. And I find it very interesting that they note in here her exact hour of her birth.
GUEST:
I know, I noticed that.
APPRAISER:
We see that she was finally baptized in 1793.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
So she was nine years old, she had her religious training, and she's now being baptized.
GUEST:
So she had to make a profession of faith in order to have the christening or being baptized.
APPRAISER:
Yes, that's a good way of saying it. And Mertel has a large body of work, and he has price points. With fraktur, it's about condition, condition, condition.
GUEST:
This is not good condition.
APPRAISER:
This is not good condition. It's in a poor state of preservation.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
We see there's a tear going down the middle where it was folded. And we see that there's a lot of staining, and that staining is coming from the back not the front.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
It was probably on a piece of wood or cardboard that leached into the paper.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
I would highly recommend that you have this piece conserved. And I think for purposes of longevity and passing it along in your family, I think you would want to do that.
GUEST:
I agree.
APPRAISER:
So we're going to put an insurance value on it today of $4,000 to $6,000.
GUEST:
You've got to be kidding me! Oh, my word!
APPRAISER:
And pieces of his work have sold as high as $20,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER:
In a much better state of preservation.
GUEST:
Oh my goodness, I'm just amazed. I never had that thought. Wow.
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