Johann's Career

Introduction

On various documents, Johann Jurgens listed his occupation as lithographer, draftsman, designer, and artist. He was all of the above. He was also an engraver, calligrapher, inventor, and patent holder. According to one of his grandsons, the name of Johann Jurgens was held in awe at New York's Printing House Square. I find his artwork to be amazing in design and execution. See a later blog post for Johann's large art pieces.

Johann's Businesses

Two drawings exist for a portrait business in New Jersey and an art studio in Chicago. I believe they were used for newspaper advertisements.

Fortunately, we have a calligraphy drawing that shows what kinds of design work was done by Jurgens Art Studio in Chicago.

Categories of design work at Jurgens Art Studio.

Print Portfolio

Thank you to Robert Jurgens, Johann's grandson from his first marriage, who saved the print portfolio that Johann used in his business. Samples of his work were glued onto large boards. Here are two examples that included drawings and calligraphy. 

One sample board in the print portfolio for Johann Jurgens.

Another sample board in the print portfolio for Johann Jurgens.

From Johann's portfolio, take a closer look below at his various works. Rather than classify them by the type of lithography or method used for creation, for which I don't have enough knowledge, I am breaking them into the different types of uses. Whenever there were comments penned on the drawing, I included them rather than cropping them out. I took photos of these individual pieces from the portfolio boards using my iPhone. Sometimes they don't look quite symmetrical. That is because I didn't hold my phone flat enough. Please excuse the distortion.

Sample Greeting Cards

Many of the greeting cards shown below have have an added dimension to them. If you run your fingers over them, the print is raised.

Product Labels

Letterheads and Business Ads

From these letterheads and business ads, you get an idea of the various types of calligraphy Johann used. These were all done freehand, which is quite amazing.

Resolutions and Memorials

Other Drawings in Portfolio

A large drawing mounted on four boards.

Currency Engraving

Family lore is that Johann Jurgens was responsible for a part of the engraving of either the U.S. one-dollar bill or five-dollar bill. As a result, he was tracked periodically by federal agents to ensure that he was not engaged in counterfeiting. I could find no proof to back up this claim. 

In looking over the samples in the portfolio, however, several drawings stood out. It is possible that they were created and submitted as examples of his work. This is the kind of work that was used in currency engraving. The first two drawings did not appear in a search through photos of historical U.S. currencies. The portraits below are not of past U.S. presidents, but they were done in the same manner. Perhaps Johann's work was exceptional enough that he had the ability to be a counterfeiter in the government's eyes.

It is known that no single engraver of U.S. currency was used. Multiple artists were used. My research didn't reveal that Johann was chosen as an engraver for part of the U.S. currency. The main engraver that was used was George Frederick Cumming Smillie, a German immigrant who worked for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing and created the etching of George Washington that appears on the one-dollar bill.

Zipper Creation

Another lore in the family is that Johann Jurgens invented a zipper that he put on his boots, but it didn't look like the modern zipper. He did not patent his idea. 

The first patent for a basic automatic clothing closure was granted in 1851, before Johann was born. It was not commercialized. Later, a complicated hook-and-eye fastener for shoes was patented and marketed at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but it was not widely adopted. The invention of the modern zipper took place in 1917. It had interlocking teeth and a slider. That inventor, Gideon Sundback, also created machinery to mass-produce his invention.

Patent Holder

Johann Jurgens applied for a patent for an amusement park ride on November 6, 1905. He received U.S. Patent 825,130 on July 3, 1906, assigning one-half the rights to Charles Kretschmer of Brooklyn, New York. I found Charles Kretschmer in the 1920 census in Queens, New York. He was born in Germany in 1868 and his occupation was a tool maker/machinist in a machine shop.

The invention is simply called an Amusement Apparatus. Passengers ride in an electrically powered gondola car that moves over a curved track while the gondola alternately swivels in an axial rotating motion (spinning) and an oscillating motion (swinging back and forth). It appears each car holds ten passengers.