More Than Decoration: Barn Stars Sustain the Spirit of Folk Tradition

Two barn star painters, Eric Claypoole and Andrew Shirk, work on the Hutchinson Barn, near Vera Cruz, in 2020. The barn features star patterns, distinctive to the Lehigh Valley region, with raindrops and floral borders.
Photo, Patrick J. Donmoyer

The rungs of the extension ladder echoed across the hollow as the barn star painters prepared to ascend the facade of the barn to begin their third and final day of work. Carefully selecting their brushes and colors, the painters took their places 20 feet above the barnyard where they worked their magic. With rapid and calculated movements, they began applying the paint to the rough contours of the wooden siding, alternating between steady and fluttering brushstrokes to follow the variable woodgrain. Carefully layering black against chrome yellow over a solid white background, they completed a series of eight-pointed stars enclosed with elaborate borders and punctuated with smaller rosettes, arranged symmetrically across the red forebay of the barn. Despite the complicated surface of the tongue-and-groove fir siding, the newly painted stars appeared to emerge as if from a memory in the old wood. The colorful geometry coincided precisely with the template provided by the weathered remnants of the previously existing historic barn stars, cultivated by many generations of painters interacting with the exposed wood and the elements. When the painters finished for the day, cleaned their brushes, and packed in their ladders, yet another decorated barn had been revived from dormancy in the rolling hills of the East Penn Valley, the epicenter of a living tradition.

For well over a century, the decorated barns of Berks and Lehigh counties have captivated and puzzled visitors from across the nation. Elaborate geometric murals, depicting radial star patterns, are the focal point of a comprehensive decorative scheme. Articulated with rosettes, crosses or teardrops between each star point, barn stars complement other decorative elements, such as painted trim and arches accenting windows and doorways against the solid paint of classic barn red. These agricultural artistic expressions, rendered in vivid contrasting colors, shine forth from the landscape of southeastern Pennsylvania, visible across fields and valleys and inviting the eye and the imagination to engage the culture of the region.

Although commonly known as “hex signs” today, these traditional murals emerged from the folk-cultural imagination of the Pennsylvania Dutch, who once in the local vernacular simply called them Schtanne, or stars, an epithet rooted in generations of artistic expression favoring the geometry of celestial forms. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, craftspeople generously applied these patterns to everyday objects used in the home, on the farm, and in the church. Spreading across all aspects of secular and sacred material culture, these colorful, geometric stars were a sustained and constant presence, an impression of the studded mantle of the heavens above.

Photographed around 1890, this barn located in Greenwich Township, Berks County, bears classic eight-pointed stars with braided borders and six-pointed rosettes between each star point.
Christopher Witmer Collection

No one quite knows who the first painters were to climb ladders and bring these formerly intimate artistic renderings of the stars out of the home and into the light of the sun. But by the middle of the 19th century, large-scale murals of these celestial motifs had already become well established as an artistic form and were magnified enough to engage viewers at a distance traveling through the rural Pennsylvania landscape. Whether by intention or by accident, the barn stars had become the most publicly visible indicator of the cultural presence in the region. They became synonymous with the Pennsylvania Dutch experience.

It is this very experience itself that in recent years has fallen into perceptual decline with the waning of the use of Pennsylvania Dutch as an everyday language in Berks and Lehigh counties, the consolidation of some old family farms into large agro-industrial operations, and the ever-present encroachment of housing developments and warehouses on the formerly pristine rural landscape. Barn stars and the historic structures they adorn have become objects not only of celebration but also concern. It was once estimated that there were less than 200 decorated barns in southeastern Pennsylvania, where most are located, and that bit by bit these numbers were beginning to dwindle through neglect or development.

This perception that the tradition was under threat prompted me to photographically document the region’s decorated barns. Although my study originally began in 2008, I have continued with vigilance over the past decade to not only capture snapshots in time of the region’s barns but also to regularly monitor the landscape for changes and variations as the years pass.

Barn star painter Eric Claypoole of Lenhartsville, Berks County, deftly stripes the edge of an elaborate rosette pattern produced for the Kutztown Folk Festival in 2018 to promote the region’s living traditions.
Photo, Naomi Pauley, Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

Although statistics from my most preliminary work proved that concerns about protecting the region’s historic barns are warranted, I did discover that the painting of barn stars appears to be a healthy, living tradition. I documented approximately 450 barns in Berks County alone and well over a hundred more in adjacent counties, especially Lehigh, Northampton, Montgomery, Bucks and Schuylkill, and a few in Lebanon and Lancaster.

What appears to be tipping the scales is the half dozen or so barns each year on which designs are being repainted or
painted for the very first time. Although some of these barn stars are the work of property owners, farmers or other individuals trying their hand on a single barn, the majority have been quietly added to the landscape by professional barn star painter Eric Claypoole of Lenhartsville, Berks County, and a few others like him. A second-generation painter and generous bearer of tradition, Claypoole has taught at least a half dozen other people who help him on painting jobs to keep up with the growing demand for barn decoration in the region.

Through the efforts of Claypoole and others following in his footsteps, I have witnessed firsthand how barn star painters, past and present, stand at the crossroads between tradition and innovation, community identity and popular culture, and preservation and progress. Striking a delicate balance, barn star painters elevate modest agricultural structures to celebratory expressions of the culture, stimulating interest in a visible and long-lasting contribution of value to the local community.

Milton Hill painted these designs in watercolor on paper in 1899, when he was in his sixth and final year at the Virginville one-room schoolhouse. He carried them in his painter’s toolbox throughout his career for nearly six decades.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University (Gift of Esther and Harold Derr)

This transformation of the landscape, although highly significant, is nothing new. Previous generations of painters navigated similar eras of immense cultural change in the 19th and 20th centuries, and their legacy continues to leave lasting impressions in today’s landscape. Among the most influential and prolific of these artists was Milton J. Hill (1887–1972) of Virginville, Berks County.

In 1902, at the age of 14, Hill began his profession as a third-generation barn star painter under the tutelage of his father John M. Hill (1850–1933), who in turn learned from his father Jacob Hill Jr. (b. 1818). Against a family backdrop of the painter’s trade, Milton’s proclivity for geometric art had already begun to blossom by the time that he completed his sixth grade education in a local one-room schoolhouse. He had experimented with watercolors and produced a series of precise star patterns that he carried with him in his painter’s toolbox for the duration of his career, spanning six decades. As a professional contractor, Hill painted and wallpapered houses, decorated and grained furniture, and even worked on the occasional church steeple, but his real passion was painting barns. By the time of his retirement from barn painting in the early 1960s, Hill had decorated dozens of barns with a unique signature barn star that he developed around 1910, an innovation that would revolutionize the local art form. Consisting of an eight-pointed, multilayered starburst with an elaborate interlaced border executed in 10 colors, the “Hill Star,” as it would later be called, was the most geometrically sophisticated barn star found anywhere in the region.

Kutztown photographer Wallace A. Dietrich (1853–1909) documented Milton Hill and his painting crew around 1907. Hill is standing on the painter’s lift, center, with cousins Oscar Adam, left, and Wilson Adam, right. Below are members of the Stein Family posing with their horses in front of their barn near Moselem, Berks County.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

Unlike some local barn stars, which were painted and repainted with little variation from generation to generation, the Hill Star was an innovation, a departure from the uniformity that tends to follow strict adherence to traditional forms. Hill’s work did not so much push the boundaries of traditional art but rather expanded the range of possibilities open to future generations of painters in the region. Likewise, many of the region’s historic barn stars are unattributed, because they were not originally signed like much of the art produced today. Hill’s work, on the other hand, was so noticeably different that his eponymous star served as a kind of visual calling card advertising his work throughout the region.

Venerated barn star painter Milton J. Hill of Virginville, Berks County, paints one of his classic, elaborate signature stars on the barn at his family farm. Hill began painting barn stars decades before the term “hex sign” was introduced through tourism.
Pennsylvania Folklife Society

Although Hill’s work was innovative, it also was produced in a manner consistent with the traditional art form as a reflection of his community’s values and aesthetics. Later widely accepted as part of the standard corpus of the region’s folk art, the Hill Star is a testament to the way in which traditions have the capacity to grow and change with each generation, simultaneously evolving and reinforcing folk-cultural identity.

At the same time that artists like Milton Hill were working and painting as a seamless continuation of local tradition, travel writers from outside of the region were providing romanticized accounts of the decorated barns and the supposed meanings behind their work. In 1924 retired Congregational minister Wallace Nutting of Framingham, Massachusetts, published a travelogue entitled Pennsylvania Beautiful, featuring photographs and reflections on the rural landscape and architecture of southeastern Pennsylvania. Amid his descriptions of colonial taverns and bucolic landscapes, Nutting penned the first interpretive account of the decorated barns of the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Proposing the idea that these decorations were supernatural in origin, Nutting claimed they were applied to barns as protection against witchcraft, and he used the term Hexafoos, meaning “witch foot,” to describe the tradition, in his words, “as a kind of spiritual or demoniac lightning rod!” Although the Pennsylvania Dutch were no strangers to folklore concerning the supernatural, Nutting’s explanation was largely contrived. By virtue of national distribution, however, Pennsylvania Beautiful reached readers across the United States and beyond, firmly establishing the expectations of visitors to the region that magic was afoot among the Pennsylvania Dutch. In the 1930s and 40s Nutting’s account went on to directly inspire the coinage of the popular terms “hex marks” and “hex signs,” the latter of which remains in predominant use today.

Milton Hill’s signature star pattern consisted of an eight-pointed starburst and an elaborate border of interlacing arcs. The design is executed in several variations with up to as many as 10 different colors.
Photo, Patrick J. Donmoyer

By the time Nutting’s account first appeared in print, Milton Hill had already been painting barns for well over 20 years. It wasn’t until the 1940s that he even became aware of the circulation of Nutting’s theories, and no inkling of these accounts rang true for local painters, who continued to think of their work simply as “stars.” Another prolific barn painter, Harry Adam (1915–2005) of Edenburg, Berks County, who began his career in 1936 as an apprentice to Hill, was equally dismissive of the term “hex sign.” Adam not only painted stars but also served as Windsor Township tax collector and owned and operated a paint store, where he supplied professional-grade enamels to many local barn star painters. In an interview in the early 1960s, Adam gave his appraisal of the notion of the hex sign: “I doubt if some of those self-styled ‘hex’ sign painters have ever actually raised a ladder against a barn, let alone paint one.”

This contentious comment was most certainly directed at one of Adam’s customers, a local painter named Johnny Ott (1890–1964), who conferred upon himself the humorous title “Professor of Hexology.” Ott painted a wide variety of tourist goods from his studio on the side porch of the Lenhartsville Hotel, where he was proprietor and bartender. Adam and other contemporary barn painters were well aware that Ott never painted a barn in his life, but Ott’s unique artwork had become quite popular with the rise of tourism in the region.

Notably, Ott was a bit of an outsider among the rural Pennsylvania Dutch, not only because he was a Catholic in a decidedly Protestant region but also because of the hexologist persona he developed to promote his work. Beginning in the 1940s Ott had been a painter of decorative tinware, with traditional curvilinear motifs of hearts, birds, tulips and some star motifs. Although in 1955 he explained to reporters from the Pittsburgh Press that he painted his first “hex sign” on a wooden chair for his wife sometime in the late 1940s as a tongue-in-cheek “prank,” the concept apparently was so successful that he began to routinely paint hex signs, first on hubcaps, milk cans and a wide variety of household objects, before shifting to painting on commercial signboard sometime around 1951.

In 1953 Ott made his first appearance at the Kutztown Folk Festival, where he offered explanations of his work, competing with the venerated barn star painter Milton Hill, who had also joined the festival for the first time the same year. By this time, Hill was widely credited with having been the first barn star artist to paint traditional designs on commercial signboard, an innovation in surface media that Ott had presumably copied. Yet in their own right, both artists were pioneers in their craft — Hill with his elaborate signature star patterns painted on commercial signboard and Ott with the first commercial hex signs as tourist novelties in an altogether new visual vocabulary that differed from the strictly geometric designs painted on local barns. Although their legacies differed dramatically in content, their combined impact in the 1950s revolutionized the tradition on every level.

The prolific Johnny Ott of Lenhartsville, Berks County, was the self-proclaimed “Professor of Hexology.” He launched and standardized the modern artistic imagery of commercial hex signs and their meanings.
Collection of Patrick J. Donmoyer

Johnny Ott’s persona as a hexologist set the standard for what would later become an artistic trope among the Pennsylvania Dutch. Claiming supernatural power in his work, he invented a series of codified signs combining the whimsical motifs he had originally painted on tinware with loose geometric star patterns inspired by local barns. Each sign had a succinct meaning, such as “Love and Romance,” “Success and Prosperity,” “Sun and Rain,” and even a sign based on a Roman Catholic rosette window, which he called the “Daddy Hex,” the supposed progenitor of all hex signs. Ott was as much a showman as he was an artist, entertaining his clients with tall tales about the supposed magical influence of his work, so that each customer not only received a piece of his art but also a personal encounter with the mysterious hexologist.

Ott’s crowning achievement was in the decoration of his own establishment, which today is the location of the locally renowned Deitsch Eck Restaurant. Ott created a series of murals featuring a wide variety of folk art designs, which later became a tourist attraction in and of themselves. Some of these murals were recently recreated in 2020 as a restoration project by hex sign painter Ivan Hoyt, a craftsman who has been demonstrating at the Kutztown Folk Festival for more than 40 years. Hoyt’s panels were made to cover and protect some of the fragile original paintings
that Ott produced in the early 1950s. Johnny Ott had also teamed up with the silkscreen printer Jacob Zook of Lancaster in the mid-1950s, and together they established the corpus of standardized commercial hex sign patterns and meanings that are commonly marketed at tourist destinations in Lancaster even up to the present day. Zook had begun screen printing in 1942, first producing images of the Amish and horses and buggies for novelty shops, but
his business began to boom when he became Ott’s “apprentice.” Many of the earliest of their collaborative pieces feature the printed signature “Zook and Ott.” Through a complimentary and noncompetitive agreement, they cross-promoted one another’s work — Ott’s work of the more valuable hand-painted variety, Zook’s mass-produced and affordable.

Together, their work dominated the tourist markets throughout the region, especially Lancaster County, where fascination with the Amish drew tourists from across the nation. Although historic barns decorated with stars are rare in Lancaster County because Old Order Amish and Mennonite communities did not paint them, the success of Zook’s hex sign enterprise fostered the common misperception that these groups did paint them. Even Ott himself sometimes donned plain garb as part of his hexologist persona, conflating the Amish in the American imagination with commercialized hex signs.

The celebrated barn star and hex sign painter Johnny Claypoole of Lenhartsville painting at an outdoor festival and displaying a wide range of patterns. Claypoole was the protégé of Johnny Ott, and he carried on many of Ott’s original designs and techniques.
Courtesy of Eric Claypoole

Nevertheless, Ott later recanted to reporters from the Allentown Morning Call in a clever media stunt published just two days after his death on July 29, 1964. He confided that he was no magician or worker of miracles and that any powers ascribed to his work were purely in the minds of his customers. This “mind over matter” explanation would later be repeated by Ott’s protégé and local apprentice, John P. Claypoole (1921–2004) of Lenhartsville, Berks County.

Sometime in 1961 Claypoole responded to a classified ad in the local paper placed by Ott, who was in poor health at the time and eagerly seeking an apprentice to carry on his business. Claypoole was an ornamental metal worker who had only recently moved to the area from Philadelphia with his family to rediscover his rural roots on his maternal side in northern Berks County. Although Ott initially demanded a $3 cash payment in advance for each painting lesson, he never once actually permitted Claypoole to pay for his apprenticeship.

Ott bonded easily with Claypoole and taught him not only his unique line of commercial designs but also the technical art of painting. Both men were gregarious storytellers and Roman Catholics, and Claypoole readily adopted Ott’s repertoire of stories and explanations. By the time that Claypoole took Ott’s place at the Kutztown Folk Festival in 1964, he had also adopted the nickname “Johnny” as an homage to his mentor.

Although Johnny Ott never painted on barns, his legacy impacted the traditional barn star art forms indirectly through his protégé Johnny Claypoole, who eagerly painted barns at every opportunity, in addition to painting the commercial hex sign patterns developed by Ott.

The Sunday Barn in Perry Township, Berks County, bears three classic Hill Stars. They were originally painted sometime in the 1940s, repainted by Johnny Claypoole in the 1980s, and most recently repainted in 2010 by Eric Claypoole.
Photo, Patrick J. Donmoyer

Claypoole formed a painting crew with his sons, and together they repainted a number of barns in northern Berks County beginning in the early 1970s. Claypoole may have painted less than 20 total barns during his career, but his work was well-publicized and did much to promote the continuation of the tradition in the decades following the retirement of other well-established barn painters such as Milton Hill and Harry Adam.

Claypoole also is credited with having first publicly described an important element in repainting historic barn stars — the so-called “ghost” effect. A form of differential solar weathering, this occurs when painted elements, such as barn stars or even commercial signs painted on wooden siding are exposed to the elements for decades, whereby a pronounced relief forms in the surface of the wood. This process leaves behind an ephemeral image that can be used to repaint historic barn stars. Although it is likely that artists have been making use of the “ghost” for centuries, it was Claypoole’s very public persona that raised awareness of this intriguing interaction between the artists and the elements.

A relief of a barn star, called a “ghost,” forms after decades of direct exposure to the sun and the elements. Geometric areas with multiple layers of paint are protected, while the background gradually recedes. This highly complex ghost is all that remains of an elaborate star from the 1920s, attributed to Milton Hill.
Photo, Patrick J. Donmoyer

Eventually, as Johnny Claypoole’s career began to wind down, his son Eric Claypoole, who grew up at his father’s side in the studio and helped on barn painting jobs, eventually became the leading painter in the Claypoole family. Johnny Claypoole’s final barn star job was in 1995 — a repainting of an original Milton Hill star from the 1940s on a strawshed — while Eric did the high work on the upper gables.

Since first helping his father, Eric has gone on to paint more than 85 barns, many of which are historical restorations, while others are original designs inspired by years of working as both a commercial painter and as a restoration carpenter throughout the region. His work combines influences from his father and Johnny Ott, as well as Milton Hill, Harry Adam and countless other unknown painters whose works continue to offer insight and inspiration.

About a quarter of the barns that Eric Claypoole painted were supported by funding from the Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Tour Association, one of the oldest tourist organizations in the state, founded in the 1950s for the purpose of stimulating interest in the region through its decorated barns. The novel concept of a local driving tour of decorated barns inspired many other regional tours throughout the United States, including the barn quilt tours that are popular in central and western Pennsylvania and throughout the American Midwest.

Although the original Hex Tour mainly provided a map advertising local businesses with information about where to find barn stars, the organization eventually teamed up with the Kutztown University Foundation to fund half of the total cost of painting for selected barns visible along public roadways. Originally started around 1996 by David Fooks, former director of the Kutztown Folk Festival, as a collaboration with the Hex Tour Association, the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, and the KU Foundation, this project has gone on to fund the repainting of dozens of barns located in the vicinity of northern Berks County. This institutional support has helped to maintain the character of the landscape and has made possible the continuation of the tradition for a wider number of barn owners, many of whom own modest family farming operations.

The Sharadin Barn at the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University features this classic eight-pointed star. The heavy weathering on the barn siding reveals details of previous iterations of patterns weathered into the surface of the wood under the painted star.
Photo, Patrick J. Donmoyer

In addition, the Hex Tour’s efforts led to a collaboration with Pennsylvania’s Americana Region, Berks County’s visitors bureau, which resulted in the creation of the most comprehensive map and driving tour of the decorated barns in northern Berks, known today as the Barn Star Art Tour. The route, which covers more than 40 miles of winding backcountry roads, features three dozen stunning examples of the region’s decorated barns.

More than two-thirds of these barns were painted by Eric Claypoole, who has to date worked on more barns than any other known painter in the history of the tradition. Working at the pace of between three to six barns per year, he will soon exceed 100 barns — a monumental contribution to the craft.

Although Claypoole’s work ranges from the colorful commercial hex sign patterns invented by Johnny Ott to the strictly geometric traditional barn stars, his true love is in experimenting with geometry and exploring the historic barns bearing the works of generations of painters before him. It is in the space between these two parallel artistic trajectories that he finds meaning in his work.

Claypoole often explains to his customers that he prefers to think of “what the designs represent,” as opposed to
the strict literal meanings supplied by Ott, Zook and others. The commercial designs are more simplistic in content: hearts represent love, distelfinks (gold finches) stand for prosperity, sunbursts are symbolic of abundance and fertility, and so on. Yet, the significance of older, geometric patterns remains more elusive.

Eric Claypoole restores a 7-foot Milton Hill Star on the Sunday Barn, based upon the deeply weathered “ghost” on the surface of the barn wood.
Photo, Patrick J. Donmoyer

Paradoxically, although the barn stars are part of what sets the Pennsylvania Dutch cultural landscape apart, they are also echoes of artistic expressions common to agrarian folk cultures throughout the world, across all places and times. “The stars,” Eric Claypoole explains, “are as old as time,” and the whirling effect in a barn star, produced by a pinwheel of contrasting colors, captures something of the essence of “the generations of humanity spinning through time.”

Indeed, the colorful barn stars are emblematic of the continuation of tradition over many generations, based in the passing down of artistic techniques and the celebration of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture’s agrarian roots. The stars are simultaneously symbolic of the community’s desire for continuity and connection with the past, as well as the degree to which change and innovation are necessary components of a living tradition. Whether denizens of Berks and Lehigh counties or visitors from other parts of the world, new generations have the opportunity to engage the stars as artistic expressions of the region and explore new ways of creating, experiencing and sustaining America’s unique folk art traditions.

Further Reading

Donmoyer, Patrick. Hex Signs: Myth and Meaning in Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Stars. Kutztown, PA: Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, 2013. / Ensminger, Robert F. The Pennsylvania Barn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Distribution in North America. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. / Fooks, David. “In Search of America’s Oldest Hex Signs,” Der Reggeboge 36, no. 1 (2002): 21–27. / —. “The History of Pennsylvania’s Barn Stars and Hex Signs.” Material Culture 36, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 1–7. / Marshall, Jeffrey L., and Willis M. Rivinus. Barns of Bucks County. Doylestown, PA: Heritage Conservancy, 2007. / Shoemaker, Alfred L. Hex, No! Lancaster, PA: Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center, 1953. / Yoder, Don, and Thomas E. Graves. Hex Signs: Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Symbols and Their Meaning. 2nd ed. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000.

The Barn Star Art Tour showcases the region’s premier decorated barns set within the active agricultural landscape of northern Berks County. The tour was produced by Pennsylvania’s Americana Region in cooperation with the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. For more information, go to visitpaamericana.com/partner/hex-barn-art-tour.

Patrick J. Donmoyer is the director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. He is the author of several books, including Hex Signs: Myth and Meaning in Pennsylvania Dutch Barn Stars and the recently published Painter of the Stars: The Life and Work of Milton J. Hill. His articles for Pennsylvania Heritage include “The Easter Egg: A Flourishing Tradition in Pennsylvania” (Spring 2020) and “Kutztown Folk Festival: America’s Oldest Folklife Celebration” (Summer 2019).