Curbed Features: Creating Korner's Folly, 'The Strangest Home in the World'

Exterior of the Folly. Photo courtesy of Michael Blevins Photography.

Built in 1880 and once billed as "The Strangest Home in the World," Krner's Folly in Kernersville, N.C. celebrated its 135th anniversary last Saturday. But it is not really a home in the conventional sense. Artist, decorator, interior designer, and "Man of a Thousand Peculiarities" Jule Gilmer Krner conceived of this structure as an entertaining space, bachelor quarters, horse stables, studio andmost importantlyshowroom for the wares of his Reuben Rink Decorating and House Furnishing Company.

Today, the population of Kernersville is approximately 23,000, but when Krner finished the Folly in 1880, the town was home to 200 people. Heading toward historic downtown Kernersville, you pass the usual suspects of Southern suburban AmericaCVS, Walmart, Hibachi Grill, Cookout, Biscuitville, and several gas stationsbut soon you leave these reminders of the present behind. The Folly is situated right up against South Main Street, as a business would have been in the late nineteenth century, in all its now-anomalous Victorian grandeur.

The Folly stands 100 feet high, with a "privy," or outhouse, also on the property. It was built with eight different sizes of bricks, which were made on the premises. The sheer variety of building materials was only one aspect of the variety that defined the house. From the outside, the Folly doesn't look particularly odduntil you notice its six chimneys. These are the first sign of what will also characterize the interior: endless options, designed to tempt the customer.

In 1785, Krner's grandfather Joseph left his town of Furtwangen in the Black Forest region of Germany, where he had been working as a business representative for a manufacturer and dealer in clocks, and moved to the Friedland settlement in central North Carolina, several miles south of present-day Kernersville. He established a business making watches and clocks, ran an inn, and eventually acquired more than 1,000 acres of land that he passed on to his three childrenSalome, Johann Frederick, and Philipwhen he died at the age of 61. Jule Gilmer was born in 1851, the last of Philip's eleven children. He was educated in art in Philadelphia and set up a business in Cincinnati as an artist and designer, but when his father died in 1875, he returned to Kernersville.

The Folly struck people as odd when it was under construction. The name came from a passing farmer's exclamation that the building would prove to be "Krner's Folly," but Krner wasn't offendedin fact, he loved the name. As with many histories in North Carolina, his is bound up in the tobacco industry, which prepared him to take on the Folly by honing both his appetite for controversy and his advertising skills. For several years in the early 1880s, he painted outdoor billboards for Durham's Blackwell Tobacco Company, manufacturer of Bull Durham products. The advertisements, which were sometimes as large as 80 x 150 feet and appeared on barns, buildings, and boulders all across the country, were known for their anatomically correct bulls, which some found scandalous. Krner seems to have enjoyed this. In fact, he even wrote letters to the local paper, posing as miffed young women and demanding the removal of the ads.

Having advertised someone else's product in the past, he was more than prepared to advertise his own. "Reuben Rink," the pseudonym he had used to sign his bull advertisements, became the name of his interior design business. The Folly would be his ultimate marketing tool. When Krner devised this unique showroom, most of Kernersville's residents would have selected decorating materials from catalogues and printed advertisements. Krner took the catalog and made it a physical space. Where catalogs had transformed the real into representation, he transformed representations back into the real.

His customers were wealthy, and they sought large pieces to suit their large housesnot unlike today's suburban consumers who fetishize the space-filling designs of mass producers such as Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware. (Approximately 90 percent of the furniture in the house today is original.) The enormous floor-to-ceiling buffet in the dining room was built in the room and has not been moved since. He also stocked the Folly with wallpaper books, fabric swatches, and other materials that customers could peruse. Ultimately, these materials could be compiled into custom sketches, a movement back to representation after the client had absorbed all the options the Folly had to offer.

And the options proliferated. The house had multiple levels and ceiling heights ranging from five-and-a-half to 25 feet. Every doorway and window was unique. Murals were painted on walls, ceilings, and even the undersides of staircases. Fifteen fireplaces showcased tiles of different colors and designs by both Krner and the American Encaustic Tile Company in Zanesville, OH (likely ordered from their New York showrooms). The carved woodwork throughout the interior represented Krner's signature patterns that could be arranged in different combinations: roping, beading, and egg and dart. The wainscoting alone contains approximately 10,000 feet of bead molding, all of which was carved by hand. Even the utilitarian cellar was outfitted with tile and other decorative motifs, and some of the mosaic patterns on the floors mimicked carpeting or rugs and can also be found on the porches, which were added in 1906.

The reception room upstairs was designed for social events, complete with conversation chairs and corners draped in green curtains to hide canoodling couples. Krner liked to entertain, and welcoming customers into the Folly was another form of hospitality, albeit a more commercial one. The house was peculiarly positioned between the public and the private, and it partook of both. Krner anticipated the customer's desires and attempted to answer them by offering plenitude. Would you like this fireplace? Or this one? Or perhaps something that combines the two? Each room suggested infinite combinations of elements: wallpaper, carvings, furniture, curtains, carpets, and tapestries.

See the rest here:
Curbed Features: Creating Korner's Folly, 'The Strangest Home in the World'