Johnny Claypoole (Active 1962-2004) Hex Sign, Lenhartsville
“Many barns throughout PA are decorated with hex signs, also known as barn stars, that incorporate traditional Pennsylvania Dutch images of stars, tulips, birds, and hearts.”
You will notice the metal barn stars on your travels. They are hung on the gable of a home or barn. Before you enter an acquaintance's house, check first for the barn star. Whether or not it is there determines whether or not you will be able to leave at the end of the night.
I’ve written and re-written this post at least three times now because there’s so much to cover and it’s something I’m passionate about. Hell, there are multiple people who have devoted their lives to this topic! So what follows below the cut is the most bare bones, straight-to-the-point version I’ve managed to do. I can expand on it later if there’s interest or I can point people to some good sources for their own research.
Note: Image heavy post with most of the photos courtesy of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University.
So first: The Name
The tradition of painting these images onto barns goes back more than 200 years in Pennsylvania alone. Celestial images can be seen on multiple household objects in PA Dutch culture and back in Europe where the immigrants who settled here came from.
In the Pennsylvaanisch Deitsch (PA Dutch dialect) there are two terms most commonly used to describe these images. Blumme (flowers) and Schtanne (stars). While not reserved exclusively to refer to the art, these words predate anything else that we’ve called the images.
[Image description: 24 photos of barn stars next to each other to show off the similarities and differences. Good examples of Blumme style can be seen in the bottom three photos of the first column. The entire top row are great examples of the Schtanne style.]
Hex Sign is the most common name today thanks to a man named Wallace Nutting who created Pennsylvania Beautiful, a collections of images and descriptions of rural Pennsylvania created for a burgeoning tourist industry. According to a single source, the images were supposedly called “Hexafoos” or “Witch’s Foot” and were part of an ancient traction of warding off the devil. It should be noted that the word Hex means witch in the dialect.
[Image description: an ink image of a barn from Earl Township, Berks County featured in Wallace Nutting’s Pennsylvania Beautiful (1924) which links to the naming mix up.]
While Nutting likely did not mean to confuse people, it is VERY likely that there was some miscommunication. A “Hexefuss” (the standard spelling) is a mark left behind by a witch, often resembling the footprint of a bird. Depending on the type of animal print the mark can have slightly different names but crows were most popular in legends so that’s what’s linked to Hexefuss the most.
Another sign that Nutting was confused is the fact that the other domestic objects in his work were decorated in a similar manner but were not also given the title and mythical meaning.
Next: The Meaning
So if they weren’t to ward off evil, why were they there? What did they MEAN?
No one really knows. Some think it was “just for nice” since they’re often only on the side of the barn that’s facing the road. Celestial symbolism has deep ties with folk culture and the Blumme and Schtanne images could have different associations with biblical and natural events.
While most barn stars do not have any major superstitious or magical meanings, we will likely never know for sure. Barn blessing were not uncommon, they just often took a different form such as a paper charm hidden under floorboards or in peg-holes within the frame.
If you’ve heard that all stars have “meaning” like fertility, love, etc. you are likely thinking of the transformation to the art form that came around the 1950s.
The 1950s was a time of increased interest in Dutch Country. Many were fascinated with the “sectarians” or “plain people” like the Amish and even though they did not decorate their barns, business minded people knew there was money to be made. The “church people” or “gay” Dutch were the ones who decorated and who are responsible for the signs which before this point had not been sold commercially.
Jacob Zook, a screen printer, started selling disks with a predefined “meaning” and he along with two other hex sign painters in particular are most credited with changing how producers, consumers, and tourists understand hex signs. The two others are Johnny Ott, a self-proclaimed Hexologist from Berks County, and his protégé Johnny Claypoole.
[Image description: Johnny Ott posing for a postcard in front of his collection of new, stylized “hex signs.”]
Ott was the first to really introduce motifs like birds and interlacing flowers which had been around in other PA Dutch folk art but had not been seen on barns. Ott also sold his work on disks instead of painting barns directly. He was a charismatic man who enjoyed telling tall tales about the magical properties of his work, even claiming that the Delaware River flood of 1958 was due to a farmer leaving his hex sign for rain and fertility out too long.
[Image description: Johnny Claypoole painting a hex sign, in front of a wall of his other art.]
Claypoole continued his mentor’s tales and stylized art but also painted barns directly, something Ott never did. In fact, Johnny Claypoole and his son Eric are responsible for repainting many of the aging stars in PA. The term “ghost stars” which refer to the weathered outlines of old barn stars is attributed to Johnny Claypoole and these ghosts are used as templates for repainting to maintain the local history and aesthetics.
[Image description: A weathered barn star “ghost,” salvaged from a once-decorated wagon shed in Windsor Castle, Berks County.]
[Image description: Eric Claypoole painting a barn star in the traditional style]
Conclusion:
Since I’ve mentioned other big names in the art form, I’d also like to give a shoutout to Milton Hill. He was an active painter during the time of Ott and Claypoole but he strictly worked in the traditional style and primarily painted directly onto barns (later in his career he painted disks as well but still in the traditional style). He developed the famous “Hill Star” that can be seen in much of Berks County. His work is not better or worse than Ott and Claypoole, they are just different sides of the coin. All of it is beautiful and now a part of the cultural heritage at large.
[Image description: A photo of Milton Hill from a Kutztown Folk Festival. He is working on a smaller traditional scored and painted disk with a large rendition of his famous “Hill Star” on the far right of the photo behind three smaller pieces.]
Day 49; Following the river south, we’ve come across quite a few farms and homes our Pip-boys have tagged as being “Homesteads”. Homesteading was a thing folks did before the war where they’d gain ownership of unowned property just from living on it. Which, I guess is what everyone is doing now that’s still alive. Another interesting pre war peculiarity are the big red “barn stars” on most of these old houses, which I’m starting to believe had nothing to do with communism and the big red scare. They feel more like a traditional decoration.
