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← STORIED OBJECTS / Rosemaled Plate
A wooden plate painted in the center to show a depiction of the Folklife Festival, bordered by painted flowers.

Photo by Zvonimir Bebek, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Image Description A painted wood plate is decorated with swirling floral designs in hues of blue, gold, and white. The outer rim of the plate is trimmed with a thin line of deep red. The center of the plate is trimmed in a circle of red with an inner circle of gold, which surrounds a painted scene of the Folklife Festival—featuring images of tents, a red barn, the Washington Monument, and the Smithsonian Castle. Music notes are floating through the air throughout the picture. At the bottom of the picture, “Smithsonian Folklife Festival 1998” is written in flowery, dark green script.

Rosemaled Plate

The Smithsonian Castle and Wisconsin program site are front and center on this painted wood plate. With musical notes raining down from above, artist Jean Giese used rosemaling—a Norwegian decorative painting style—to commemorate her experience at the 1998 Folklife Festival.

Rosemaling depicts a Festival program

“Whether expressed through church, tavern, or home, the role of ethnic identity remains prominent in Wisconsin. Fourth- and fifth-generation Americans in Wisconsin are still quite cognizant of their ethnic origins, as pure or as varied as they may be.”
—Richard March, program curator

The 1998 Wisconsin program took place during the state’s sesquicentennial, its 150th anniversary of statehood. By focusing on the rich interplay between climate, geography, and economy—and the state’s rich ethnic diversity—the Festival brought to life a variety of Wisconsin’s regional traditions. Like so many immigrants before them, the Norwegians who arrived in the mid-nineteenth century left behind most of their traditional art practices. It took a few generations for interest in those roots to return, but when it did, rosemaling and acanthus carving, which decorated so many family heirlooms, became the focus of study and revival. Today the swirling floral patterns and abstract designs, whether painted or carved, are clear markers of Norwegian American identity.

Jean Giese credited her father with encouraging her early interest in painting. He was a Norwegian immigrant who supported his family by farming tobacco. He enjoyed woodcarving and allowed young Jean to decorate his carvings. She later attended rosemaling classes at the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, and remains active in the Norwegian cultural center in Norskedalen, Wisconsin. She passed on her devotion to Norwegian folk art to her daughter, who took up acanthus woodcarving with her husband. Their daughter, in turn, has carried rosemaling to the new medium of cake decoration.

Giese’s depiction of the 1998 Festival site realistically positions a red barn and several program tents in front of the Smithsonian Castle. The Washington Monument stands to the west and musical notes fill the sky, suggesting a lively Festival soundscape. After the Festival concluded, the Wisconsin program was restaged in Madison as the Wisconsin Folklife Festival, giving statewide audiences a chance to learn more about their own history and heritage, and honor the many people who preserve Wisconsin’s folklife.

—Erin Younger, exhibition curator
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