In 1977 The Minneapolis Institute of Arts purchased its first major example of upper midwestern furniture, a piece that I will refer to as the John Eriksen cupboard because of its inscription (figures 1, 2). On the backboard between the upper and the lower sections is written in Norwegian: John Eriksen, Brithe Sjurs Datter Engesaethe. Aar 1870 (“John, the son of Erik; Brithe, the daughter of Sjur; Engesaethe. The year 1870”).The only historical information that accompanied the cupboard was a list without dates of five successive owners beginning with its purchase in De Forest, Wisconsin. The piece was included in the exhibition The Old Northwest Territory at the Henry Ford Museum in 1964 and is referred to in a review of this exhibition in Antiques (March 1965). Shortly before the purchase by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the cupboard was cleaned and a coat of darkened varnish was removed.The cupboard is as historically perplexing as it is visually exciting. Together with a sister piece, about which more will be said, it stands as the finest and most monumental known example of upper midwestern country furniture with painted decoration. The two are also the only major known examples of nineteenth-century American “rosemaling,” a type of rural decorative painting done extensively in Norway at the time mass immigration from that country to the Upper Midwest got under way around 1840.That the John Eriksen cupboard came from De Forest, Wisconsin, is supported by an obituary in the De Forest Times, December 6, 1907, which reads in part:

J. E. Engeseth, an early pioneer and one of the most widely known residents of this vicinity, died at his home west of the village Monday afternoon at 3:20 o'clock. . . . Mr. Engeseth was 69 years of age, being born Nov. 19, 1838, in Sogn, Norway. He came to this country in 1846 with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Erick Engeseth. On May 11, 1859, he was married to Britha Grinde, who survives him with nine grown-up children. . . . The deceased was one of the earliest settlers of this community, having made his home in the town [ship] of Vienna continually since his arrival in this country in 1846. For over 40 years he has resided at the present home. He was one of the most substantial farmers of the community. . . .

“J. E.” is unquestionably the John Eriksen of the cupboard. His father's name is given as Erick, which according to Norwegian practice at the time would make his second name Eri(c)ksen. He also used Engeseth, the farm name of his father. His wife's name was Britha Grinde, and a genealogy of the Engeseth family prepared by Gerhard Naeseth of the University of Wisconsin confirms that her father's surname was Sjur. This makes her the “Brithe Sjurs Datter” of the cupboard.¹The sister piece is in a private museum, Little Norway, near Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, and was purchased by the museum's founder, Isak Dahle, on June 11, 1937, as a piece that had come from Norway (figures 3, 4). The name of the seller is apparently not given in the museum's acquisition records, but Isak Dahle bought a number of items from the antique dealer Ellen Anderson of Stoughton, Wisconsin, who is listed as the first buyer of the John Eriksen cupboard.² The two may therefore have come on the market at the same time or, at least, have been sold by the same dealer.The Little Norway cupboard is inscribed: Erik Eriksen og Solvi J D Engesethe 1868. (“Og” is the Norwegian word for “and.”) The Engeseth genealogy establishes that Erik was a younger brother of John, born January 2, 1841, and died September 27, 1891. He was married on July 4, 1865, to Solvei Johannesdatter Saebe, who had also emigrated from Leikanger, Sogn, the home area of the Engeseths and the Grindes.In most respects the two cupboards are closely related. Both consist of three major sections. The upper has a deep molding at the top, three compartments with doors in the middle, and three shallow drawers below. The middle section is open. The lower section has one wide central drawer and two narrow flanking drawers at the top and a single compartment with two doors below. The Little Norway example is constructed in one piece but stands on a low separate base. The Minneapolis example, which is the taller of the two, separates between the middle and the lower sections but has no base.The details of construction and craftsmanship in the two pieces are for the most part identical. The drawers are joined with small square-headed nails rather than dovetailing. The doors, though appearing paneled, are constructed of one piece except for small moldings and two horizontal members mortised into the upper and lower sections of the front side. The purpose of these members is undoubtedly to prevent warping, a function which in early Norwegian plank doors was performed by two horizontal members mortised into the back at the points where the hinges are attached. The locks for the doors are hand-wrought brass, the bolt running the full width of the lock case so that it projects from the opposite side when the lock is open. The John Eriksen cupboard also has two exceptional hand-wrought locks in the shape of shields with stars and stripes on the outer drawers of the upper section.³ There are no locks on the corresponding drawers in Erik's cupboard. The hinges on both cupboards are wrought iron and identical in form.The plates of the hinges, in accordance with Norwegian practice, are mortised into the doors and frames rather than applied to their surfaces. The lumber for both cupboards has been hand-planed with a tool of an early type that leaves slightly concave markings.Even the scheme of the painted decoration on the two cupboards is essentially the same. On the John Eriksen cupboard a sketchy and primitive representation of a lion hunt and a well-executed flourish in the form of an elaborate knot have been added (figure 2). Both are on the center drawer of the lower section and have their sources in urban art. The flourish has, in fact, an almost exact counterpart on page 710 in an eighteenth-century edition of Caspari Erasmi Brochmand's Huus-Postill, a book of devotional readings much used in Norway and among the immigrants (figure 5).The most obvious differences in the two cupboards are in their proportions and in the extent of their wear. The John Eriksen cupboard is comparatively tall and deep, measuring 88-1/4 inches high, 52-1/2 inches wide, and 21-3/4 inches from front to back; while the Erik Eriksen piece is lower and more shallow, measuring 77-1/2 inches high, 54-1/2 inches wide, and 16-3/8 inches deep. These differences in overall proportions are subtly distributed among all parts so that the appearance of the pieces is much the same. The Erik Eriksen cupboard is heavily worn, while the John Eriksen piece has only slight scuffing and practically no general wear. The effect of this distinction is heightened by the fact that the darkened varnish and other patina on the John Eriksen piece has been removed.The almost new appearance of the John Eriksen cupboard suggests the possibility of repainting, but I have been told that no paint was added when the piece was cleaned and that the only sign of later paint which came to light in the cleaning of the exterior was along a narrow line running horizontally through the inscription where a portion of the cupboard's open middle section had once been removed and later restored.⁴ I consider the blue paint on the interior of several drawers and cabinets also of later date than the original decoration because it seems incongruous with and better preserved than the paint elsewhere on the interior. The areas may originally have been without paint, as are the corresponding areas of the Little Norway cupboard.Judging from appearances it would be tempting to consider the Erik Eriksen cupboard a piece of early Norwegian origin (in spite of its 1868 date) and the John Eriksen piece a copy made in American in 1870. Close inspection of the two cupboards, however, indicates that they must be products of the same hand, a craftsman well grounded in traditional Norwegian methods of furniture production and apparently using traditional tools. Even the subtle differences in the proportions of the two pieces are more apt to occur in two products of the same master than in an original and a copy. Tests made recently by R. C. Koeppen at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin have, moreover, shown that the wood in both pieces is pinus strobus, a type of pine found in Wisconsin but not in Norway. The apparent difference in the age of the two pieces is presumably the result of differences in use. Erik and Solvi may have put their cupboard in the kitchen while John and Brithe placed theirs in the parlor.The major problem presented by the Engeseth cupboards is their uniqueness in the context of Norwegian immigrant furniture. Neither the type nor the decoration has any close parallel in other known pieces. Even such details as the hand-wrought locks and hinges are exceptional for their time and place.To find the source of the unusual elements in the Engeseth cupboards we must turn to Norwegian country furniture of the early nineteenth century, primarily that of the Sogn area in western Norway. The considerable width in relation to height is a characteristic of early Norwegian cupboards resulting from the comparatively low walls against which they stood. An open middle section is also typical, a carryover from earlier hutch-type cupboards in which the upper section had shelves rather than enclosed cabinets. The projection of the central area in the lower section became standard in the late eighteenth century, and the introduction of shallow drawers above and below the middle section followed suit early in the nineteenth century.The above is true for cupboards in most parts of Norway, but the Renaissance rectilinearity of the Engeseth pieces is a characteristic found primarily in furniture of the west coast. The painted decoration, too, is of west coast type. Especially typical is the bold blue-on-white marbleizing and the use of gold and silver leaf. The leaf work is no longer especially evident on the Engeseth cupboards, but traces can be seen beneath the flowers and on the moldings of the Minneapolis piece. Symmetrical floral motifs based on trees and urns of flowers are also characteristic of Sogn, although the shaded ground and the somewhat loose impressionistic handling of these motifs on the Engeseth pieces suggest stylistic influence from the neighboring valley of Valdres (figure 6).⁵ A hallmark of painted decoration on cupboards in Sogn is the inscription in the open area. According to the Norwegian scholar Nils Ellingsgard, even painters from other regions where the practice was not found conformed to this local tradition when working in Sogn.⁶The only details in the cupboards which might be considered characteristic for Norwegian immigrant furniture are the raised diamond panels on the drawers. Similar panels are found, for example, on an immigrant cupboard from Westby, Wisconsin, which also has an inscription on the back of the open section (figure 7). Its maker was undoubtedly also from Sogn, but its verticality and the introduction of glass panes in the doors make it more typical of immigrant production than are the Engeseth pieces.The most intriguing question posed by the Engeseth cupboards is who made them. A tempting hypothesis is that the maker was a visitor from Sogn who spent several years around 1870 in the De Forest area. Several unusual examples of handcrafted Norwegian immigrant furniture in the Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, have such a history. A problem with this theory is that by the late 1860s few carpenters in Norway would have been producing pieces with the early character of the Engeseth cupboards. Nils Georg Brekke, a Norwegian scholar of west coast rosemaling, says that the type could have been made in Sogn as late as 1870 but that this would be the outer limit of its occurrence there.⁷On the basis of the information available, I consider the most likely maker of the cupboards to be Erick Johnsen Engesaeter, the father of the brothers whose names appear on them. The conclusion is purely conjectural because very little is known about Erick Johnsen Engesaeter. The only information I have been able to obtain from Norwegian sources is that he was operating the Engesaeter farm in Leikanger, Sogn, together with the widow of his father's brother in 1838.⁸ American sources are only slightly more helpful. Though Erick's son John was given a long and laudatory obituary, the father's death on November 9, 1892, appears not to have been reported by the press. A history of the Norway Grove Lutheran Church of De Forest, published in connection with its centennial in 1947, makes much of Erick's involvement in the founding of the congregation and in the building of the first church, but sheds no further light on his life or talents.⁹The most significant information for our purpose is furnished by the Norwegian-American historian Hjalmar Holand, who in De Norske settlementers historie says that Erick was well known in Sogn and that his letters from America led to further emigration from that district.¹⁰ That he was well known in the area argues in favor of his being a craftsman. Rural craftsmen in Norway often traveled from farm to farm and therefore gained more exposure than rural residents involved only with agriculture. The fact that he was a good letter writer confirms his literacy, a gift which the maker of the Engeseth cupboards must have possessed, given the confidence and verve with which the inscriptions are executed (figures 2, 4).If we accept Erick Johnsen Engesaeter as the maker of the cupboards, their anachronistic character can be explained. He would have learned his trade before 1846, the year he left Norway as a man in his thirties. Considering that the cupboards would have been made for sons who were now establishing themselves in the New World, he may have consciously chosen an older national style. A concern with ethnic origins is often said to be most prevalent in third-generation immigrants, but it can also be strong among aging members of the first generation. The boys whose names appear on the cupboards are Erick's two oldest sons, both of whom were born in Norway. The father through the cupboards may have attempted to perpetuate something that he recognized as passing. It is difficult to believe they would have such a purely Norwegian character without some didactic intent on the part of the maker.Accepting Erick Johnsen Engesaeter as the maker of the cupboards also offers a possible explanation for the superb hand-wrought hardware. The iron hinges could well be the work of Erick himself, since they do not involve more blacksmithing skill than an established Norwegian farmer would have possessed. The brass locks for the doors and especially the shield-shaped locks for the two drawers of the Minneapolis cupboard are another matter.Erick was a member of the building committee for the first Norway Grove Church, constructed between 1853 and 1861.¹¹ The altar for that church was the work of the most versatile and perhaps the most gifted of all early Norwegian immigrant craftsmen, Aasmund Aslakson Nestestu of Cottage Grove, Wisconsin.¹² Before leaving Norway he had received official recognition for his metalwork and had been granted the right to practice as a goldsmith in his area. He is known to have continued gunmaking and other smithing along with farming after having settled in Wisconsin.¹³ He must have been known to Erick Engesaeter through his work on the Norway Grove altar, and the distance between De Forest and Cottage Grove is not great. A. A. Nestestu could well be the master of the locks.There is much circumstantial evidence for crediting the Engeseth cupboards to Erick Johnsen Engesaeter, but the attribution also poses problems. If Erick was an established and skilled craftsman in Norway, why is there no evidence of his work in this country between 1846 and 1868? A break of this kind in the career of craftsmen who emigrated from Norway is, however, not unusual. Land was the goal of most early Norwegian immigrants, regardless of their occupations in Norway. This must have been true for the over twenty decorative painters who are known to have emigrated but who never surfaced here as painters of significance.¹⁴ Desire for land also led wood carvers and furniture makers to abandon their trades, but they infrequently returned to them in later years. A notable example is Lars Christenson from Benson, Minnesota, the carver of the well-known altarpiece now in the Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, Iowa.¹⁵If Erick Engesaeter was not active as a carpenter or painter during his first twenty years in this country, how could he have retained the skills necessary to the making of the cupboards? Strange as it may seem, this kind of retention has parallels in the histories of other immigrant craftsmen. After making a living as a supervisor in the cabinetry division of a large sash-and-door factory for almost fifty years, Leif Melgard of Minneapolis is now doing wood carving of the highest aesthetic and technical caliber in styles and techniques learned in a carving school as a boy in Norway. A farmer, William Jacobsen, of Shell Rock, Iowa, at the age of seventy began making straw mobiles in a traditional technique of extreme complexity taught him as a child by his father in Denmark.One must ask what the motivation might have been for Erick to create such monumental works as the cupboards when he was approaching the age of sixty. A desire to perpetuate ethnic values has already been mentioned. A further inducement could have been what might be called “the afghan phenomenon.” As people who have the slightest talent for making things begin to age, they often develop a desire to leave samples of their handiwork with descendants or other family members. The tendency is universal rather than ethnic, but I have found it to be exceptionally strong among the Norwegians in America. Much of their folk art is a product of this phenomenon. That it may have played a role in the creation of the Engeseth cupboards is supported by the fact that their dates are considerably later than the marriage dates of the couples to whom they are dedicated. It would not have been until the young people had assumed the major responsibility for the family farm that the father could afford the luxury of creating unique mementos for them.This article is the rhetorical defense of a theory that could be either validated or destroyed by one piece of evidence. Although some uncertainty remains about the identity of the maker of the Engeseth cupboards and about the specific circumstances that brought them into being, they stand as exceptional products of an immigrant culture in the Upper Midwest.Marion Nelson is a Professor of Art History at the University of Minnesota and the Director of Vesterheim, the Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, Iowa.Endnotes

1. The numerous variations in the spelling of names is typical of rural Norwegian orthography in the nineteenth century.
2. Letter from Merk Hobson, Little Norway, Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, August 23, 1977, and an interview with the daughter and son-in-law of Isak Dahle, Professor and Mrs. Asher Hobson, Little Norway, June 19, 1978.
3. That any of the hardware was hand-wrought in the 1870s is unusual, but the shield-shaped locks are especially puzzling. The cases are cut from solid brass. The two parts are set into the drawer and frame with the fronts serving as the escutcheons. The bolts are cylindrical and turn out from one axis.
4. John H. Bereman, Aurora, Illinois, a son of the third owner, Mrs. James Bereman, told me in 1965 that a portion of the cupboard had been sawed off to accommodate it in his mother's kitchen. The removed section was retained with the intention of eventually restoring the cupboard to its original height, a restoration which had already been carried out before the piece was purchased by The Institute of Arts. Photographs of the cupboard in its reduced state are shown in Antiques, March 1965, pp. 314-315.
5. The Norwegian scholar of rosemaling Nils Georg Brekke also detected Valdres characteristics in the John Eriksen cupboard.
6. Letter from Nils Ellingsgard to the author, Oslo, Norway, May 4, 1978.
7. Telephone interview by the author with Nils Georg Brekke, Bergen, Norway, September 1978.
8. Per H. Bøthun, Leikanger bygdebok I, Gardssoga (Leikanger: Leikanger bygdeboknemd, 1965), p. 492. Professor Gerhard Naeseth, Madison, Wisconsin, assisted me in locating this reference.
9. 100th Anniversary, Norway Grove Lutheran Church (De Forest, Wisconsin, 1947), p. 13. John and Selmer Hatlem, De Forest, made this local publication available to me.
10. Hjalmar Holand, De Norske settlementers historie (Ephraim, Wisconsin, 1909), p. 159.
11. 100th Anniversary, Norway Grove Lutheran Church, p. 13.
12. The church history referred to above does not mention the carver of the altar, but oral tradition credits Nestestu as the maker, and the style of the work as known from a photograph in the history supports this attribution.
13. Øystein Vesaas, Rosemaaling i Telemark II (Oslo: Mittet and Co. A/S, 1955), pp. 140-155, and an interview with the artist's grandson Howard Norsetter, Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, October 17, 1977. In the Norwegian literature, Nestestu is spelled Nestestog.
14. See the three-volume work by Øystein Vesaas listed above and Nils Ellingsgard's Rosemaaling i Hallingdal (Oslo: Breyer, 1978).
15. Marion Nelson, “A Pioneer Artist and His Masterpiece,” Norwegian-American Studies 22 (1965): 3-17. Reference to numerous wood carvers who broke off their craft activities while establishing themselves on the land are made in a forthcoming catalog for an exhibition of Norwegian-American wood carving sponsored by the Norwegian-American Museum, Decorah, Iowa.

Referenced Works of Art

1. Possibly Erick Johnsen Engesaeter
   Norwegian-American, died 1892
   Cupboard, 1870
   Pine, painted decoration, 88-1/4 x 52-1/2 x 21-3/4
   The Julia B. Bigelow Fund, by John Bigelow, 76.75
2. Detail of figure 1
3. Possibly Erick Johnsen Engesaeter
   Cupboard, 1868
   Little Norway Museum, Blue Mounds, Wisconsin
4. Detail of figure 3
5. Flourish from Caspari Erasmi Brochmand's Huus-Postill, p. 710
   Probably Copenhagen, late eighteenth century
6. Detail of figure 1
7. Norwegian-American
   Cupboard, about 1870
   Private collection, Westby, Wisconsin
   Photo courtesy Joyce Tester, Minneapolis, Minnesota