The harvesting couple
Zurich, Jakob Georg Röttinger, 1898
Stained glass with lead came; mass-dyed glass, schwarzlot, silver stain, enamels. Wooden frame
In light: H 196 cm, W 131 cm; with frame: H 209, W 144
Vitromusée Romont, VMR 679
This stained glass window comes from a luxurious Art Nouveau villa from the mountain village Engi (Canton of Glarus in Eastern Switzerland). The house was built in 1898 by the wealthy industrialist Jakob Schuler-Brunner (1846 – 1922) for his daughter Rahel. He operated a printing press in Glarus and large spinning and weaving mills in Mels (St. Gallen). From 1896 onwards he concentrated exclusively on the textile industry in Mels.
Rahel was the only child of Jakob Schuler and his wife Rosina Brunner (1853 – 1919). She was married in May 1898, aged 21, to Alfred Leonhard Blumer, the son of another textile industrialist, Leonhard Blumer. The latter had founded the weaving mill Sernfthal in Engi, which is still in operation today under the name WESETA.
The opulent villa in Engi was the wedding present of the father of the bride to the young couple, and must have given an impression of magnificence in the then small and modest village of Engi.
The window was located in the south-east of the villa facing the garden, part of a glass-encased veranda. It shows a young couple picking fruit from a tree: the man stands on a ladder and passes the fruit he picks from the branches down to the woman, who catches it in her wide skirts. The representation is intended as a metaphor for married partnership, which yields fruit through shared labour. The Mediterranean landscape and antique-style clothing – e.g. the Phrygian cap – suggest a connection with Greek mythology: the goddess Gaia, mother earth, gifts the bridal couple Zeus and Hera a tree laden with golden apples as symbols of love and fertility.
In the upper corners are the crests of both families: to the right the arms of the Schuler family, to the left that of the Blumers. Between them is the crest of the Canton of Glarus with Saint Fridolin. The stained glass was designed and executed by the Zurich based artist Jakob Georg Röttinger (1862 – 1913), son of the glass painter Johann Jakob Röttinger (1817 – 1877), who had immigrated from Nuremberg. Röttinger was one of the most celebrated glass painters in Switzerland around 1900. The design of the window – with the family crests changed and additions to the lower corners – was integrated into the workshop’s catalogue and served Röttinger as a sample to present to potential clients.
Rahel Schuler’s husband Alfred Leonhard Blumer had inherited his father’s business and initially continued to run it successfully. In the late 1930s, however, following the Great Depression, the Blumer-Schuler’s lost practically all their property, including the resplendent villa in Engi. The window was removed from its original location in the 1980s, after another change in ownership.