Emil Schuhmann

Emil Schuhmann (January 1, 1856 - April 15, 1937) was a Texas-born accordionist and bandleader who created the Pyramide toy. The elaborate toy, considered Texas folk art, was purchased in 1969 by Ima Hogg, daughter of Texas Gov. Jim Hogg, and put on display at Winedale Historical Complex near Round Top, Texas, where it remains to this day.

Biography Emil Schuhmann's Pyramide is considered one of the finest pieces of Texas folk art. Schuhmann was born in 1856 in the Waldeck community in Fayette County, Texas, to Carl Schuhmann and his wife, Christiana Friederike Wilhelmine Voigtel. The Schuhmanns immigrated to Texas in 1853 from Oberscheibe in Saxony, Germany. Oberscheibe was a mining community, and that detail as well as others about Emil's father's life, would make their way into Emil's Pyramide toy.

Schuhmann was one of four children. The oldest, Wilhelmine, was the only one to marry. Her first husband, Carl Kreidel, died in the Civil War. Her second husband was Eduard Wenzel. Emil and his younger sisters, Anna and Agnes, never married, choosing instead to remain on the family's Waldeck farm. Schulmann spent his time composing and teaching music. He was a member of the Schuhmann Band along with his cousins, Paul and Gus Schuhmann and other family members.

In the 1870s, Schuhmann began carving the Pyramide. He whittled all the pieces out of wood by hand with a pocket knife. The toy is about high and wide, with a domed building surrounded by a cupola. The building is supported by a papier mâché mountain. Three rotating circular platforms laden with carved figures are powered by the heat from thirteen oil lamps attached to the building and the mountain. The lower platform, which rotates inside the mountain itself, carries eight miniature miners, some pushing carts of ore and some carrying axes. The middle platform features soldiers carrying rifles with bayonets. The top platform features band members and a bandmaster. Other details include carved pine and palm trees and wooden figures in a fenced yard in front of the building - a soldier guarding at the gate; a shepherd with a flock of sheep; a hunter aiming his gun at a deer; three dogs and a leopard; and a squirrel looking down from a tree. The mountain is made from an 1872 German-language Galveston newspaper. Many of the scenes depict Carl Schuhmann's life back in Germany. Carl had served in the German Army and worked as a miner. The toy has been on exhibit at Winedale ever since. Historian Cecilia Steinfeldt, known as the first lady of Texas art, described it as “one of the finest pieces of folk art ever made in the Lone Star State.”