Family Business
Family bonds can be as strong as good, handmade furniture, as this early occupational portrait from Norway suggests.
By Joshua F. Moore
Norway photographer Minnie F. Libby might have thought to prepare an extra chair when Otto Schnuer and his family wandered into her Cottage Street studio to pose for this occupational portrait in 1912, but then again "Miss Libby," as the renowned local photographer was known, probably felt that this family, more than any other in the area, might bring their own chairs. Schnuer, the moustached gent at far right, was known throughout western Maine for the rattan chairs and other furniture he built, proclaiming in an 1899 advertisement: "I can design a chair for you so that no one else in the world will have one like it.
