UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 30, Page 3
May 2, 1996
Faculty author; Book on Delaware folk art preserves the passing scene

     As a young man growing up in rural Kent County during the early
years of the 20th century, Jehu Camper saw changes taking place in
what were then familiar scenes of everyday farming and community life.
     To preserve this cultural heritage before it disappeared, Camper
sought to create, in wood, scaled-down scenes that he, and others of
previous generations, had witnessed.
     The legacy created by Camper, who died at the age of 91 in 1989,
is examined in a new book by Robert D. Bethke, English.
     Americana Crafter: Jehu Camper, Delaware Whittler, recently
published by the University Press of Mississippi, is the ninth book in
its Folk Art and Artists series. Books on the series focus on the work
of informally trained or self-taught artists rooted in regional,
occupational, ethnic, racial or gender-specific traditions.
     "Folk art, in form and substance, has a community basis," Bethke
said. "It's art with an individual vision in keeping with a collective
identity and shared experience.
     "Jehu Camper hoped that these assemblages would connect
generations of Delawareans," Bethke explained. "He hoped that the
individual pieces would serve as a link between the young and the
old."
     The Camper book is a result of research since 1977, when Bethke
first met Jehu and Lillian Camper.
     During Camper's long and prolific career as a whittler, the
Delawarean created more than 600 objects, about 50 of which are
assembled scenes. Bethke's book includes black-and-white photographs
of the artist, and the backyard Camper's Museum built in 1975 to
display his handicraft. Color plates depict representative
assemblages, which are described in Camper's words.
     The book notes that the earliest assemblage, and Camper's
favorite, was completed in 1933. It shows a farmer, wearing a slouched
hat and smoking a corncob pipe, sitting astride two oxen hauling a log
to a saw mill. Although this assemblage marked the beginning of
Camper's lifelong project, Bethke said, Camper did not begin dedicated
work on the "memory art" until 1945, when he retired from operating a
service station in his native Harrington.
     Despite losing an eye in a 1930s accident while replacing a tire,
Camper whittled until severe arthritis put an end to his efforts in
1984.
     Bethke's book captures the whittler's keen sense of humor. On one
occasion, while exhibiting his work at the Delaware State Fair, Camper
told a woman who had expressed an interest in becoming a whittler
that, to get started, all she needed was to get herself a piece of
wood, a sharp knife some Band-Aids and a few cuss words.
     Bethke said that Camper remarked later that the woman never did
become a whittler. "I guess she just couldn't find the cuss words,"
Camper said.
     Camper's assemblages, which Bethke likens to three-dimensional
photographs of the past, offer glimpses into the daily life of the
Delaware farming community. Scenes include hauling and scalding hogs,
sorghum molasses making, a water-driven grist mill and a blacksmith
shop.
     In 1984, the Delaware whittler was honored by then-Gov.Pierre S.
du Pont IV and, that same year, Camper was invited by the Smithsonian
Institution to display samples of his work at the 17th annual Festival
of American Folklife on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Although
the Smithsonian expressed interest in acquiring the collection, Bethke
said, the Campers declined the offer when they learned that the
majority of the work would probably remain stored somewhere in the
museum's vast archives.
     Camper's dream of keeping his collection together in one place,
for public viewing, was fulfilled in 1992, three years after his
death, when his wife, Lillian, donated its entirety to the Delaware
Agricultural Museum and Village in Dover. The museum currently
features most of the assemblages in a prominent display.
     Bethke, who began teaching at the University in 1971, traces his
interest in Americana to having been raised in a home filled with
country antiques and folk art.
     As an undergraduate at Middlebury College, where he majored in
American literature, Bethke learned about folklore studies from Horace
P. Beck, a nationally known folklorist. With Beck's encouragement,
Bethke went on to pursue M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in folklore and
folklife at the University of Pennsylvania.
                                                         -Jerry Rhodes