Historic Trappe Virtual Tour

Register to watch this pay-what-you-wish Virtual Tour of Pennsylvania’s Historic Trappe, with Executive Director Lisa Minardi and Curator Christopher Malone. Historic Trappe’s Center for Pennsylvania German Studies, located in the historic Dewees Tavern, contains five exhibition galleries featuring a wide variety of furniture, metalwork, fraktur, textiles, and other decorative arts. This tour begins in the Folk Art Gallery, which represents the breadth of cultural and religious backgrounds of the people who settled in Colonial Pennsylvania, including Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Lutherans, Amish, Mennonites, and Quakers. Among the dozens of stellar objects that Minardi and Malone share are a Johannes Mayer chest and the decorated birth and baptism certificates related to Mayer’s family, a “showstopper” desk and bookcase from Lancaster, and a pewter flagon by Johann Philip Alberti.

The experts also guide us through highlights of Historic Trappe’s exhibition Valley Culture: Constructing Identity Along the Great Wagon Road, on view through August 2025. The show includes folk art stretching from southeastern Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia that illuminates how locally distinctive forms of material culture emerged and settlers transformed artifacts of daily life as they settled along the Great Wagon Road. Including loans from nearly a dozen private collections, the exhibition showcases exemplary works, including the iconic c. 1800 “leaping stag” cupboard painted by Johannes Spitler of Shenandoah (now Page) County, VA; a newly discovered 1829 chest of drawers from the Mahantongo Valley, PA; and a 1789 chest by the famed “Embroidery Artist,” who was inspired by Henrich Otto’s fraktur.

Register now to watch this insightful and inspiring virtual tour recording!

Length: 47 minutes

Registration Fee: Pay What You Wish

After you register, you will receive an email with a link to view this Virtual Tour.