The History of Window Screen Painting

The tradition of painting door and window screens for decoration and privacy began in 1913 in Baltimore when William Oktavec moved to the city from Newark, New Jersey. He had painted his first window screen while on the job at Eclipse Air Brush Company in New Jersey for a secretary whose work was often disturbed by people on the sidewalk outside her office. With the newly-painted screen, the secretary could see out, but no one could see in.

In Baltimore, Oktavec painted a screen to shade the fruit at his corner grocery store at North Collington and Ashland Avenue. Before long, he began to get requests for painted screens, and others in neighboring ethnic communities started to join in the tradition. By the 1930s, East Baltimore row houses sported almost 100,000 painted door and window screens. Today this folk art tradition is declining. It is estimated there are less than 3,000 painted screens in Baltimore.   (Source: Maryland Historical Society)

How We Began Painting Window Screens

Being in the Art and Craft Show field we are always thinking of new ideas to put out there. Barbara's need to organize her collection of pierced earrings first spurred this idea of hanging her earrings in the mesh of the screen. She found that the mesh of the screen was a perfect material to hang her earrings in but it was rather boring hanging just a piece of screen on the wall so she decided to put it in a frame and at least painting the frame would give it a more artistic look. The Earring Holder was well received and www.earringholders.com was born. Still not happy with the look of just the frame being painted, the designs started running over onto the mesh and before we knew it there were over 50 designs all being painted directly onto the screen mesh itself. Before long the question of were we from Baltimore arose and we discovered that there was a whole history behind painting window and door screens and so we are now offering our designs for your home, RV, Porch, Lanai or if you merely want an art screen framed to hang on the wall.