Great Hall Exhibitions
Whittlin' History
the artistry of Jehu Camper
Among the marquee exhibits at the Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village is Whittlin' History a permanent exhibit that displays and interprets the works of Delaware folk artist, Jehu Camper (1897-1989).
Camper regarded himself as a custodian of the past who wanted his carvings to remind people of how things were done in a bygone era. During his life he was celebrated as a local folk historian and served as a "resident whittler" at the Delaware State Fair, in programs at schools, and at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklore. With his many presentations Camper engaged the public in an examination of their rural heritage and gained renown for promoting its preservation with his folk carvings. The complete collection of Jehu Camper’s work – over 600 pieces - was donated to the Delaware Agricultural Museum in the 1990s by Jehu Camper’s widow, Lillian.
The mixed-media assemblages, created with the assistance of his wife Lillian, depict evocative scenes of traditional farm work and community life. Filled with whimsy, the carvings preserve vivid memories of rural life in Delaware. Camper’s work captures rural Delaware just before the most significant changes in agricultural history occurred. By 1945, tractors, mechanical harvesters and automatic balers had changed the practice of agriculture forever. But the simpler ways of farm life at the turn of the twentieth century, a life of self-sufficiency and hard work, live on in Jehu’s whittlin’s.