signatures & Moravians

[spgordon]

Folks on this list have discussed before why Christian Oerter might have begun to sign his rifles--an unusual practice at the time. Writers had proposed in the past that it had something to do with a change in the Moravian economy, from communal to market/private, but that explanation doesn't fit the facts: we know that some Moravian craftsmen, including the instrument maker John Antes, had labels with his name on them in his instruments as early as 1759 (when the economy was still communal), and very few Moravian craftsmen signed their products long after the communal economy ended.

Others have proposed that signatures demonstrate a sort of "pride in craftsmanship."

Yesterday I came across this item in the Minutes of the Overseers' Committee in Bethlehem (for January 12, 1767): "We recommended to Thom. Fischer that he have a stamp made for his hats so that other people, as has often happened up to now, cannot sell other and more poorly made hats as Bethlehem hats."

Is it possible that this is the reason that Antes and Oerter (and others, including this Thom. Fischer) signed their products? Signatures would prevent others from passing off other products as Moravian-made and thus protect the Moravians in Bethlehem both from gaining a reputation for bad products and from being held responsible for products that they didn't actually produce ...

Thoughts?

[Eric Kettenburg]

This is an exceptionally interesting thought.  Following along the lines of your proposal, one would have to assume that products of the Bethlehem / CS tradesmen had by the mid/late 1760s developed enough of a reputation for quality that counterfeiting would be a lucrative business.  I do not recall ever coming across any documentation or commentary of the period indicating that people were attempting to pass off non-Moravian products as being of Beth/CS manufacture, but of course that doesn't mean it wasn't happening.

[spgordon]

Eric, the Aufseher's Collegium seems to be obsessed in the 1760s with Bethlehem's economic relations with their neighbors--often worrying about the community's "reputation": if a particular Bethlehem tradesman raises his prices there might be "bad press" about all the Moravian products being too dear, etc.

The only remark that I have yet come across in which the overseers express concern that others are passing non-Moravian-made products off as Moravian products is in this quotation itself--but by saying "as has often happened up to now" the overseers seem to indicate that they know (or believe) that this very thing has happened: people are capitalizing on the reputation Bethlehem has for well-made products by passing off "fakes" as the real thing.

I'll keep my eye open for other instances of similar concerns.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

This makes perfect sense to me.  Years ago, I built a rifle for a client who wanted to save some money, so he had me take it to the finishing stage and let him finish it.  At the time, I saw no reason why I should not sign the top flat as I always had done.  But the client was a ham-fisted idiot, and he undid a lot of the fine detail in the rifle's architecture by over-sanding.  I began to get feedback from others who had seen the rifle, and were amazed that my work had all of a sudden deteriorated to this point.  A little Lehigh rifle I built long ago comes to mind.
After that, when I did not completely finish a rifle, I did not attach my name to it, and instead, engraved the clients name on the top flat.  There are several of my rifles 'out there' like that.

[Eric Kettenburg]

You can say that again - I certainly made that mistake a couple of times.  Never again.