Immigrants of Germanic heritage started coming to America during the seventeenth century, attracted by William Penn's invitation to establish communities on the fertile lands of Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Germans have long been celebrated for the richness of the culture they brought and maintained for generations, but within their embracing culture, self-contained pockets of settlement produced distinctive traditions. The Mahantango Valley, bounded by Line Mountain on the north and Mahantango Mountain on the south, was settled in the eighteenth century, primarily by second-generation Germans from other southeastern Pennsylvania communities. A tradition of decorated furniture specific to this region had developed by the turn of the nineteenth century and falls into two main groups: fifteen blanket chests with owners' names and dates ranging from 1798 to 1828 and a larger group of about fifty-seven chests of drawers, slant-front desks, cupboards, and hanging cupboards made between 1827 and 1841.

It is now thought that one of the major contributors to this second group of furniture was Johannes Mayer, whose home, which still stands in Upper Mahanoy Township, was discovered to contain moldings and trims identical to those used in this chest. The painted embellishments include motifs typical of Pennsylvania German decorative arts: flowers (often tulips), birds, and other animals. But the cartouche-shape reserves on the drawer fronts outlined in delicate striping and the quarter-fans in the corners are ornamental ideas that are drawn from the larger trends prevalent in American decorative arts of the period.

Many of the decorative motifs on Mayer's chests relate to printed Taufscheine (birth and baptismal certificates), but his design vocabulary also is tied to one of the preeminent families in the region, through the marriage of Mayer's daughter Elizabeth to Jared Stiehly, the son of Reverend Isaac Stiehly. Reverend Stiehly was a popular pastor, gravestone carver, and Scherenschnitte (paper cutting) and fraktur artist. An examination of Stiehly's stone carving reveals a stacked arrangement of shaped cartouches with rosettes bordering each side, ideas borrowed by Mayer.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Chest of Drawers," in American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 321.