The annual meeting of the EastMenn Historical Society will have something extra special for Mennonite history buffs this year. On January 25, attendees are invited to participate in an event called The Objects We Hold Dear: Material Culture Among Kanadier Mennonites.
The afternoon event at the Mennonite Heritage Village will include a historical artifact show-and-tell as well as an exclusive vault tour.
The evening’s keynote speaker is Dr. Roland Sawatzky of the Manitoba Museum. With degrees in anthropology and archaeology, Sawatzky’s research interests include nineteenth-century Manitoba settlement and the social meaning of material culture.
With the use of a slideshow and in-house artifacts, Sawatzky will explore objects of significance to Manitoba Mennonites of the nineteenth century and tell listeners what those items reveal about the people’s lives, values, and community-building efforts.
“I look at different kinds of material culture that speaks to certain features of art and design,” Sawatzky says. “So furniture, literature, text illumination… each of these had wider implications. They weren’t for the benefit of the individual or to show off the skill of the [maker]. They were a way to incorporate the individual into the Mennonite village society at the time.”
Sawatzky’s focus will be on the earliest migration of Mennonites to Manitoba in the 1870s. They became known as the Kanadier. Fifty years later, a second wave of Mennonites arrived in Manitoba, known as the Russlaender. Both groups emigrated from the Soviet Union.
In the 1870s, Mennonites were crafters of their own homes and furnishings using designs that were, in many ways, unique to their culture. Each newlywed couple likewise began their home with furnishings crafted for them by family members, including the dowry chest filled with household necessities that each daughter would receive upon marriage.
“These items were not built to look individualistic or splashy,” Sawatzky says. “They were meant to look like everybody else’s furniture. It all would have looked very similar in design. It would still be beautiful and there were details in there that would tell you if the carpenter was very good or not. So there were ways to show off within strict boundaries.”
While there were elements of European hand-carving in Mennonite furniture, details that went beyond functionality were toned down and simplified for the most part.
The reason, Sawatzky says, is that life could be difficult in a Mennonite community for those who didn’t fit into the accepted cultural norms. One repercussion of moving outside these social boundaries was to be labelled with a nickname.
“In the West Reserve, the first guy to shingle his house rather than thatching it like everybody else was forever known as Schindel (Shingle) Toews,” Sawatzky says.
Furniture took on significant symbolism when it came to family values. The family dining table was one such item of relevance. The family gathered and connected around this table several times per day.
But when a family member was delinquent in the eyes of the church, they were to be separated from the family table.
According to Sawatzky, some families got creative in times like these and brought in a separate table for the outcast member, using a single tablecloth to cover both tables, thus giving the impression of togetherness while not technically breaking the church’s code of conduct.
Other pieces of furniture represented the differing gender roles in the family unit. According to Sawatzky, almost every nineteenth-century Manitoba Mennonite household would have had two large cabinets, one belonging to the matron and one to the patron of the family.
The wife’s cabinet could be found in the home’s most centralized location and was built as a permanent fixture right into the walls. The cabinet had glass doors so everyone could appreciate the display of knickknacks within.
“People often said, ‘Whatever is useless went into [that cabinet],’” Sawatzky muses. “That’s the farmer’s perspective, but it wasn’t useless. These were gifts from the woman’s relatives and friends that were put on display. Those objects were really important because they were a symbol of the relationships within the family. Everything in there is connected to a person.”
Located across the room, near the door, was a second non-fixed corner cabinet with solid doors. This one was exclusively intended for the husband of the home and access was strictly forbidden to anyone but him.
Things that one might find stored here were the brandy, tobacco, a Bible, and a knife.
“The [two cabinets] were in the same room, opposite each other. One could speculate on the symbolism there,” muses Sawatzky. “It’s sort of like two boxers in the ring at the beginning of a boxing match. But honestly, I think it had more to do with the wife’s centrality in the household.”
While Sawatzky is quick to admit that the Mennonite way of life was highly patriarchal, there were areas where the woman of the household was viewed with some measure of decision-making equality.
Sawatzky gives the example of his own grandmother, who was responsible for all the family finances, including that of the farm. This was not proudly spoken about outside the home, but Sawatzky believes it might have been common.
Further, Sawatzky says there is much written evidence to show that many families chose not to leave Manitoba for Paraguay in the 1920s, largely due to the woman’s influence. The main reason would have been staying close to extended family.
One of the reasons Sawatzky believes Mennonite women held some control in the family was due to the way inheritance worked. Unlike many European cultures of the time, where sons were the sole beneficiaries, Mennonites typically treated both sons and daughters equally in terms of inheritance.
“A woman, when she went into her marriage, she would eventually be getting an inheritance. So her economic role in the family was huge.”
The early Mennonites are believed by most to have been highly pragmatic. The Kanadier, after all, were some of the most conservative among the traditionalist groups to emigrate to Manitoba. According to Sawatzky, the more liberal Mennonites stayed in Russia or emigrated to the United States.
Even so, he says, it would be wrong to assume that Manitoba Mennonites enjoyed no forms of artistic endeavour.
In their furniture, for example, Mennonites were known to apply paint with special tools to produce the effect of woodgrain when high-quality woods weren’t available.
Another good example is the early Mennonites’ appreciation for an artform called text illumination. This technique employed a combination of text written in beautiful calligraphy surrounded by artistic images which might include biblical figures, foliage, or wildlife. It was taught in Germanic schools from the seventeenth century right up until the early twentieth century.
In the early twentieth century, a transition took place in the Mennonite culture.
“There was a shift to buying things instead of making them, because they had money and the capitalist Canadian world was opening up to them,” says Sawatzky. “Not only in terms of stores but transportation to those stores.”
This was true of the Mennonites who remained in Canada. Those who moved to Paraguay and Mexico did so for a reason: to maintain their long-held traditions and practices outside of government interference.
