Luthier techniques and approaches vary with each builder and instrument. Bernard Allen and Greg Krone use the patterns of European masters like Stradivarius, now readily available in books and on the Internet. Others, like Geoff Seitz and mandolin maker John Wynn, create their own patterns that they develop and perfect over time. Seitz, Krone, and Allen build their violins almost entirely by hand, using chisels, gouges, planes, files, knives, saws, and scrapers. Krone has an array of specialized modern hand tools, while Allen combines his love of hand methods and vintage tools.

Other luthiers incorporate power machinery along with some homegrown ingenuity. Bass maker Luther Medley and his partner, Ed Holden, opt for air-compressed tools. They engineer unique equipment powered by anything, from lawn mower to sewing machine motors. Meanwhile, Wynn blends fine handwork with creative uses of basic woodworking machinery. Instead of hand planes and chisels, Wynn uses an ordinary table saw in new ways, shaping the contoured arches of the instrument’s body before carefully perfecting it by hand.

Indeed, forming the arch out of the body’s wooden plates is a critical step to craft the best sound. In Medley’s basses, heat and pressure are used to bend the front plate into an arch. Seitz, Krone, Allen, and Wynn carve the arch into the wooden plates. As the arch’s shape and depth are slowly refined and thinned, meticulous measurements are made. Violin makers at work, like Krone, exude an air of precision. However, since “every piece of wood is different” measurements become guides rather than absolutes, and adjustments to the wood are carried out with the skill of a sculptor.

Different intuitive techniques are used to determine when the carved arch is ready. Wynn “tap tunes” by using his fingers to tap the top of the mandolin body, listening for the pitch of the wood. As he taps, he carefully adjusts the shape and thickness of the plate, which is complete when it is tuned to A. Seitz also taps on the plates but focuses more on flexibility, which allows the wood to vibrate freely when the instrument is played. Thus, Seitz thins the arches as much as possible to enhance flexibility, while preserving the strength of the wood.

Greg Krone shows a viola-in-process balanced lightly on his fingertips – a test of skilled carving. Before apprenticing with Geoff Seitz, Krone trained at the Violin School of the Americas in Salt Lake City, Utah, the first such institution in the United States. The violin school movement originated in Europe following World War II and continues to expand in the United States today.

Geoff Seitz is the only urban-based luthier in the exhibition. Because of his location, his customers are quite diverse: young and old, amateur and professional, classical, oldtime, bluegrass, jazz, country, Irish, and others. In his shop, he displays a collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century violins by St. Louis luthiers who “created wonderful, wonderful instruments.”

Wynn purchases wood locally from a third generation Ozark logger who knows Wynn’s preferences. Sassafras is abundant in the Ozarks and serves many traditional uses. Young roots are made into a medicinal tea or dye. The wood, known for strength and flexibility, is used by Ozark woodworkers as well as river guides to make johnboat paddles. Wynn once built a mandolin using Ozark sassafras – inspired by a tale that sassafras made the best sounding fiddles.

Luther Medley and assistant Ed Holden show off a Medley designed bass. After he retired, Medley thought instrument making and repair work would bring in a “few extra dollars” for his favorite pastime, “goin’ fishing.” Medley’s bass became so popular that he enlisted the help of Holden, a retired friend, woodworker, and fellow musician. Holden owns and plays this particular bass in his bluegrass band.

In 1988, Gladys Coggswell first entered MFAP’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program as apprentice in Jazz and Blues Gospel singing to Mae Wheeler, also known as “Lady Jazz,” of St. Louis. As her reputation as a storyteller and educator grew, Ms. Coggswell, a counselor with a masters degree in Education, began to focus more of her time promoting education, pride, and local knowledge through storytelling.

b. 1942
Frankford/Hannibal/Kansas City, Missouri
African American Storytelling

Apprentices:
1992 Deborah Swanegan
1993 Deborah Swanegan, Vivian Hawkins, and Samuel Williams
1995 Dorine Ambers and William Grimmett
1998 Evelyn Pulliam
1999 Evelyn Pulliam
2003 Angela Williams and Loretta Washington
2004 Angela Williams

Ms. Coggswell grew up in New Jersey and lived in New York before moving to Missouri with her husband in the 1970s. She was immersed in traditional storytelling from an early age and learned many stories from her great grandmother who raised her. In 1992, she told MFAP director Dana Everts-Boehm in an interview, “When I was very small we had a boarding house, so there were other older people in the house. We heard stories, not only when people gathered, but also from my great-grandmother, who I sometimes had to follow from one room to the next to get the end of the story.”

Ms. Coggswell focused on showing her apprentices how to tap into their own family stories and personal experience narratives. When she introduced her apprentice, Deborah Swanegan at the Big Muddy Folklife Festival in April 1992, Ms. Coggswell spoke highly of her abilities: “Our sessions together are just something that’s beyond joy. Debbie is just such a wonderful learner. She has a natural ability to do storytelling. She has a wonderful family history of her own.”

Mutual inspiration, joyfulness and respect have marked Ms. Coggswell’s partnerships in TAAP. In 1998, apprentice Evelyn Pulliam wrote, “I want to work with this master because we have the same love of our culture and she has shown an ability to get important information from our elders that needs to be preserved and shared.”

Ms. Coggswell’s apprentices spoke highly of her talents as a tradition bearer and a performer with the ability to make a positive difference. In 1993 Vivian Hawkins described her goals for the apprenticeship with Ms. Coggswell: “I would like to encourage younger people to take pride in their past and to share it with others. I believe that when people know their own history and legends they become more interested in also sharing and learning that of other cultures.” Ms. Coggswell’s generous sense of humor is reflected in that of her apprentices; Sam Williams joked in a 1993 application, “I hope to keep an audience’s attention half as long as she does!”

In a letter of support for an award nomination, historian and editor of the Missouri Heritage Series Rebecca Schroeder wrote, “Gladys Coggswell can only be described as a national treasure, and her enormous contributions to the artistic and educational life in Missouri in the past two decades are beyond measure…Whatever their ages her audiences are drawn into the world she evokes in her performances and always emerge with a better understanding of the human condition.” Ms. Coggswell has received numerous awards, including a Missouri Arts Council award in 2005, and the Governor’s Humanities Award in 2010.

Today, Ms. Coggswell combines her talents and employs storytelling and gospel singing in her role as the Storyteller in Residence at the Mark Twain Museum.

 

Audio clip 1: Gladys Coggswell discusses how she encouraged her apprentice Evelyn Pulliam to learn more about harvesters and “going on the harvest” in her community.

 

Audio clip 2: Evelyn Pulliam tells the story of how African American workers would follow the harvest north to pick tomatoes, potatoes, apples and other produce during the wane of sharecropping and how the community left at home would care for the children left behind.

b. 1918 d. 1994
Bridgeton, Missouri
Button-Box Accordion

Apprentices:
1985 Paul Knopf, John Winkler
1987 Joseph Seper, Louis Chaperlo
1989 Louis Chaperlo, Louis Gyaky
1990 Eric Noltkamper
1993 Alice Harfman

Arthur Treppler’s family immigrated to the United States from Austria and Hungary in the early 1900’s. He remembered of his youth that “every ‘fun occasion’ in his community in St. Louis included a button box band and dancing,” reported folklorist Donald Love, who observed Mr. Treppler’s work with his apprentice for the Missouri Folk Arts Program. He worked for 26 years as a quality assurance specialist in aviation for the U.S. Air Force and Navy; in his retirement, he devoted more of his time to playing, repairing and teaching the button box accordion.

Mr. Treppler learned to play the button box accordion in his teens from Louis Conrad, a friend of his parents and fellow immigrant. Mr. Treppler knew the old tunes by heart, and once he mastered the fingering, was able to play tunes by ear, though he also could read music. In his enjoyment of the instrument, Mr. Treppler co-founded the St. Louis Button Box Club and frequently played at St. Louis events like the Strassenfest and the Bevo Days festivals, celebrating the German heritage of the area. He performed music characteristic of the instrument—polkas, waltzes, and schottisches—traditional folk dances of his ancestors.

Mr. Treppler wrote about the button box with great fondness. In a 1988 publicity flier, Mr. Treppler stated, “Button accordions have the sweetest sound of any instrument; it is soothing to the central nervous system & pleasing to the ears.” He relied on the button box to cheer him when he felt down, and by teaching his art to apprentices he wanted to “retain the good sounds and happiness of this instrument.”

As a teacher, Mr. Treppler was characterized as kind, challenging, and praising, carefully keeping the techniques he was teaching just challenging enough to keep his apprentices engaged without frustrating the learner’s abilities. Mr. Treppler’s apprentice Erik Noltkamper wanted to learn from him because he was “the most knowledgeable in this area about the accordion itself, and he knows the old time songs. I want to learn the basics of the button box, and have a good foundation to keep learning.” A member of the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program’s review panel stated, “Every observer who has visited this master comments on his teaching ability. He is a leader in the Slovenian musical community as an entertainer and a teacher.”

Audio clip: Apprentice Alice Harfman and Art Treppler discuss the relative scarcity of button box players in the St. Louis area amidst the rising popularity of the instrument in the late 80’s-early 90’s. Interview with Dana Everts-Boehm in Bridgeton, Missouri.

Intriguing stories from Missouri’s rich heritage of folklore will be featured on roadside markers at locations across the state thanks to a partnership between the Missouri Arts Council’s Missouri Folk Arts Program (MFAP) at University of Missouri and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation.

Established by the Pomeroy Foundation in 2015, the Legends & Lore program helps communities celebrate local folklore and legends with roadside markers. MFAP will serve as a grant evaluator for the Pomeroy Foundation’s expanding national Legends & Lore Marker Grant Program, helping to put Missouri folklore in the spotlight.

MFAP builds cross-cultural understanding by documenting, sustaining, and presenting the state’s living folk arts and folklife in collaboration with Missouri’s citizens. A partner of the Missouri Arts Council, a division of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, MFAP is based at the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri.

“We are excited to join colleagues across the country as a Legends & Lore state partner – and to be the first to represent the Midwest,” says Lisa L. Higgins, director of the Missouri Folk Arts Program. “Missouri’s bicentennial is just over a year away, and we’ve already witnessed an abundance of creative activities in anticipation of 2021. This is an inspiring time and we expect Legends & Lore will encourage local communities to mark the Show-Me state’s unique culture in an enduring way.”

The Pomeroy Foundation is a private grant-making foundation based in Syracuse, New York. The Foundation helps people celebrate their community’s history through a variety of historic roadside marker programs, including Legends & Lore. The Foundation’s grants cover the entire cost of a marker, pole, and shipping.

“The Pomeroy Foundation is pleased to partner with the Missouri Folk Arts Program on our expanding Legends & Lore program,” says Bill Pomeroy, founder and trustee of the Pomeroy Foundation. “We feel this is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the folklore near and dear to Missouri. We’re proud to work with your communities in celebrating and preserving your folklore and legends.”

As a Legends & Lore grant evaluator, MFAP will be responsible for reviewing applications, as well as confirming the legitimacy and accuracy of folklore and legends that applicants in Missouri intend to commemorate on a marker. Legends & Lore marker grants are available to 501(c)(3) organizations, nonprofit academic institutions, and local, state, and federal government entities in Missouri. Grant applicants may submit during two application windows. Grant Round 1 typically opens in March with an application deadline in May. Grant Round 2 typically opens in August with an application deadline in October.

The Pomeroy Foundation has funded more than 100 Legends & Lore roadside markers in 11 states to commemorate fascinating local stories.

 

[adapted and updated from 2020 press release]

Christa Robbins was born in Bernbach, Germany (formerly East Germany). She started her lessons in kloppelei in a formal setting, the Kloppelschulen, or lace school, when she was a child. That particular region is known for the bobbin lace tradition, though after World War II, Mrs. Robbins stated in an application to the TAAP program, studying the craft in a formal setting was no longer an option.

b. 1928 d. 2006
Dixon, Missouri
Kloppelei (German Bobbin Lace)

Apprentices:
1997 Beverly Bartek, Merrie Pendleton
1998 Lindsay Kempf, Jeanette Stegner
1999 Lindsay Kempf
2000 Phyllis Sprenger, Elizabeth Holtmeyer
2001 Kaylene Pendleton, B.J. Kapple
2002 Linda Hickman

Mrs. Robbins met her husband, a U.S. serviceman, in Germany. After World War II they moved to the United States, and Mrs. Robbins brought the kloppelei tradition to Missouri with her. She taught her craft to relatives like her sister, children, and grandchildren, as well as others who expressed interest. She enjoyed keeping the tradition alive. Outside evaluator LuAnne Roth noted that in the beginning of Mrs. Robbins’ career as a lacemaker, only a close circle of family and friends saw her work. Later, she was “’discovered’ by craft aficionados and German heritage festivals, and thus, she is now a much sought-after artist and teacher who ‘can’t keep up’ with all the requests for her work and time.”

Mrs. Robbins’s teaching methods included not only verbal instruction and demonstration, but also discussion of the history of the art form. Kloppelei was introduced in the 1500s in Germany as a way for peasant women to earn money, and the tradition continued into Mrs. Robbins’ childhood. She began the kloppelschulen at the age of 8 in order to learn a skill to help earn money for the family.

Her apprentice Linda Hickman, who has since become a master herself in the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program with the kloppelei tradition, praised Mrs. Robbin’s teaching methods, fondly remembering her “tremendous amount of patience.” Mrs. Robbins adapted her teaching methods to suit the needs of the student; in Mrs. Hickman’s case, she focused on demonstrating the techniques while Linda took down notes (to Mrs. Robbins’ amusement and delight).

Mrs. Robbins’ legacy continues; whenever Mrs. Hickman demonstrates the art form at festivals, she estimates that 90% of the people she sees talk about Mrs. Robbins. They were “so taken with her and her work,” Mrs. Hickman said.

Audio clip: Wooden bobbins click as Christa Robbins and apprentice Lindsay Kempf manipulate the threads and discuss the art form in a site visit by MFAP staff. The “Bobbin Lace Lady,” a pattern that was Christa Robbin’s specialty, requires 150 bobbins, reports apprentice Linda Hickman. Recorded 6-23-98.