Portraiture jewelry worn as a momento to a beloved was made popular in Europe and America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Frequently mounted on brooches, necklaces and bracelets, these small-scale paintings can be recreated by students. With fine-point markers, students create images of colonial men or women on sheets of card stock. Afterward, use a sharp craft knife to trim the portrait around a small round template such as a jar lid to create a small portrait. Displays these tiny works of art by mounting the pictures on colorful scrapbooking papers. For inspiration, examples of miniature portraits can be found on websites from American art museums.
Educated young women of the day were often schooled in the arts, and stenciling was one way to show a sense of refinement and awareness of fine design. This style of artwork was referred to as "theorem painting" because of its step-by-step method of creating pleasing compositions. Colored pencils make reasonable substitutions for the hand-mixed paints of the 18th century. Purchase cardboard or plastic stencils or cut them by hand from stiff paper using a craft knife. Students imitate this folk art of the period by combining baskets, bowls, flowers, birds, fruits and vine and lattice designs by shading in open areas with various colors.
Trade signs in colonials towns often featured bold graphics that depicted the service to be found within. Shoes, eyeglasses, apothecary mixing vessels and tailored clothing pieces painted on signboards hung outside shops and conveyed quickly and effectively to visitors where to find the merchant on the busy main thoroughfare. Although most village dwellers were literate, the artwork and absence of words would have served as a type of bold advertising. Students can design their own sign boards with original images of food, drink, clothing and other trade services such as blacksmithing and carpentry. Bright colors and whimsical graphics are appropriate to this period.
Fraktur is a pen-and-ink artwork described by folk art experts as "the manuscript art of the Pennsylvania Germans." Calligraphic texts of important documents were framed by hand-painted designs and symbols. This art style, brought to America during the colonial period, is characterized by its angular, fractured appearance. Baptism certificates and bookplates, for example, employed this style of painting combined with calligraphy. Students can develop original art pieces using calligraphy-style pens and watercolor paints. Students might want to embellish with pen and paint personal certificates commemorating a recent accomplishment.