A Note from Emily Rose

For many years I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of information and images I had collected about S. Karpen & Bros. and the Karpen family. The conundrum was how to share this bounty.

I have written a draft of a book which includes hundreds of advertisements, catalogs, and furniture photographs. My goal is to use this website to publish book chapters with illustrations.

Little by little I will upload chapters. Please come back occasionally to see what is new.

Of course, I’m always interested in seeing photos of your Karpen furniture pieces

Other books by Emily C. Rose:

Portraits of Our Past: Jews of the German Countryside
(Jewish Publication Society, 2001)
A family chronicle interwoven with the life and times of the rural German Jews in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Available on Amazon

Als Moises Kaz seine Stadt vor Napoleon rettete
Als Moises Kaz seine Stadt vor Napoleon rettete. Meiner jüdischen Geschichte auf der Spur.
Translated by Matthias S. Laier (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1999) A family chronicle interwoven with the life and times of the rural German Jews in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. Sales surpassed 2,300 copies.

Emily Rose is the author of Portraits of Our Past: Jews of the German Countryside (Jewish Publication Society, 2001). A translation of her book was published in Germany as Als Moises Kaz seine Stadt vor Napoleon rettete–Meiner jüdischen Geschichte auf der Spur Moises Kaz Saved His Town from Napoleon: On the Trail of My Jewish History) (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1999). The Jewish Book Council chose Portraits of Our Past as a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist. She has appeared in several television talk shows, and a television cultural program in Germany featured her story and research. She has given programs throughout North America and in Germany at libraries, various organizations including the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference, Jewish Book Fairs, Jewish genealogical conferences, the Association of Jewish Libraries conference, and the Naples Press Club’s Authors and Books Festival Writers’ Conference. Emily’s discovery of the roots of the founder of the Berlitz School of Languages in a small south German Jewish community has garnered national and international attention. Her articles have also appeared in the Israeli Jewish Genealogical Society Journal, Sharsheret Hadorot and forthcoming in the Michigan Jewish History.She grew up in Scarsdale, NY and graduated from Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts cum laude with history honors. For three years she traveled and worked in Europe, Israel, Afghanistan, and India. She and her husband lived in and around Lima, Peru for almost a decade. There she taught adult literacy and started a cottage weaving industry employing Andean Indians. She and her husband reside in Naples, Florida. During a visit in 1992 to the Czech Republic and Poland, a few cursory inquiries into her ancestors’ lives led to a new and fascinating focus to her life. Her family had emigrated in the 1843-1870 period so she had no knowledge of their lives and did not speak German. Nevertheless, she spent the next 5 years researching her maternal ancestors and the rural Jews in south Germany, the Czech Republic, and the formerly Prussian area of present-day Poland. She undertook research in the local, city, and state archives for eight weeks each summer. 

Other website by Emily Rose:

Emily Ciner Rose has researched her paternal ancestors who established Ciner Fashion Jewelry in 1892.  She has a large collection of Ciner jewelry.  Her website is The History of Ciner Fashion Jewelry