Name/Title
Biography: Part 2, The Twilight of Country PrintsDescription
The Twilight of Country Prints
The reputation and accolades Country Prints earned in its seventeen years of operation came to an untimely end. Very early one freezing January morning in 1966, Jerry alerted the family that the adjacent sheep barn was ablaze. Had Jerry not seen the fire, their home and workshop may have been engulfed as well. The family rushed to the barn, and Bob managed to save the sheep, but as the barn burned, he collapsed and died of heart failure within minutes. He was only 50 years old.
His loss was felt immediately and deeply by his family, the Kaufholds, Country Prints, and the local community. At a moving memorial service at the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in nearby Greenfield, Rev. Arthur W. Shaw remembered his friend, saying, “Bob Wert’s outstanding trait was his ability to make his way of life identical with his philosophy of life. Most of us say one thing and do another. Not Bob Wert. He had integrity; he knew the way he wanted to live and he lived that way… Perhaps those of us who have been deeply affected by the love and friendship of Bob Wert should engrave on our hearts the legend, Wert - by hand”.
Earlier, Bob had been in contact with the nearby Greenfield Public Library to produce a Country Prints exhibit there. Peg continued the project and curated a memorial exhibit in his honor, opening in June, 1966. Bob was an enthusiastic patron of public libraries, and the exhibit featured library books he used to research his artwork. The show included items from most of Country Prints’ product categories, as well as examples of the antiques that inspired Bob’s work, including a butter churn with a hand carved rooster. One display showed original design paintings, and a silkscreen used in production alongside the finished product. The exhibit also included some of Bob’s personal woodcarvings and ceramics, including a three-arm candlestick. The show was on view throughout that summer.
Peg Wert, Fritz Kaufhold, and the Country Printers worked tirelessly to continue Bob’s legacy, and Country Prints continued operating for about five years. To freshen their product offerings, they reintroduced some of Bob’s earlier work, and hired freelance artists to develop new artwork for the business. The company also began contracting screen printing for industry, including hand printing work for other artists, corporate products, and even Cornell University’s 1967 yearbook covers. Eventually, without Bob’s unified artistic vision and unflagging energy, the business declined and was closed in the early 1970’s.
The rights to dozens of Bob’s kitchen towel and calendar towel designs were sold to America’s oldest linen producer and inventor of the calendar towel, Stevens Linen Associates of Dudley, Massachusetts, and a number of his tile designs were sold to Country Prints’ tile producer, Ceramo Studio of New York City. Both companies produced Bob’s work without the Wert and Country Prints signatures throughout the 1970’s and into the 1980’s.
Aftermath
Bob Wert was an incredibly prolific artist. This website documents over 1,100 designs produced between 1948 and 1966. Undocumented designs continue to surface and are recorded when they are discovered.
Country Prints has touched many lives, from the founding Wert and Kaufhold families, to the dozens of people who proudly worked at Country Prints in its two decade run, to the hundreds of ambitious retailers and tens of thousands of delighted customers who brought Country Prints into their homes, as well as today’s enthusiastic collectors.
During his lifetime, the appeal of Bob’s work had an influence on a number of artists and home goods producers. Many examples of his influence have been documented on printed textiles, cutting boards, and ceramic tiles. Some are loose reinterpretations of his work, while others are outright copies and poor forgeries. In each case, any inherent charm is owed directly to Bob’s original artwork.
Today, the silkscreen prints of Robert Darr Wert and Country Prints are sought-after collectibles found in online resale markets like eBay and Etsy, as well as vintage markets and antique shops. Bob’s work is in the permanent collections of the Gill Historical Commission Museum in his hometown of Gill, Massachusetts, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, and the University of Connecticut Historic Costume and Textiles Collection in Storrs, Connecticut.
For years, the only publicly available information about Robert Darr Wert and Country Prints was the information printed on the company’s surviving packaging and a short biography on FindAGrave.com. This website was begun in an effort to fill the gaps in public knowledge and foster a more complete understanding of the singular life of Robert Darr Wert and the remarkable rural business and home built by the Wert and Kaufhold families, and their neighbors, in Gill, Massachusetts.
“If yesterday’s craftsmen looked me over, they’d feel at home.”
-Robert Darr Wert