
Julius Gilmer Korner
Jule returned to Kernersville in 1869, and moved into his brother Joseph’s house to set up a studio to paint and practice photography. Clara, known by the nickname “Aunt Dealy,” moved in with the two bachelors and ran the household while they worked and courted young ladies. In early 1873, a railroad line was planned to connect Greensboro with Winston. Kernersville citizens raised money to build a 4-mile section of track to bring the railroad directly through town, and even helped construct it themselves. Joseph left his teaching job and went to work for Western NC Railroad, and he put Jule to work supervising the thirty men building the line.
The following year, Jule traveled to Philadelphia to continue his study of the arts. He carried with him letters of recommendation from his art professors and painters, William Mote and J.E. Bundy, a founding member of the Society of Western Artists, and from leading Quakers from his schooling in Richmond, Indiana. During the next couple of years, he studied design and interior decorating under Charles Fischer and served as his apprentice. Upon receiving the news of his father Philip’s passing in 1875, Jule returned to Kernersville. From Kernersville, Jule began a sign painting business, and worked for businesses in Kernersville, Winston, High Point, and beyond.
In 1877, he began designing what would become Körner’s Folly. Construction began in 1878 on his combination studio, office, and home, and was completed in 1880. With Körner’s Folly complete, he started the Reuben Rink Decorating and House Furnishing Company, using Körner’s Folly as a living catalog for his interior decorating busiess. A year later, his unique home and sign painting business was starting to gain regional attention. Julian S. Carr, head of advertising for Blackwell’s Bull Durham Tobacco Co. in Durham, NC, hired Jule, tasking him with making Bull Durham tobacco the best-known tobacco in America. Jule began designing and painting large-scale advertisements featuring realistic bulls on barns, buildings, and boulders, signing them “Reuben Rink” as his nom de brosse, or brush name.
On October 14, 1886, Jule married Polly Alice Masten of Winston, and in 1887, she gave birth to their son, Gilmer. By this time, Jule’s enormous Bull Durham tobacco advertisements were visible throughout the South, widely discussed, and immensely popular. Tobacco magnate Julian Carr promoted Jule to manager of Blackwell’s advertising department and gave him an unlimited expense account. Jule hired four additional crews to paint his signs all over the United States, and eventually their popularity led to what is believed to be the first successful outdoor advertising campaign in America.
In 1888, Carr hired Jule and the Reuben Rink Co. to paint frescoes on the ceilings of his mansion, Somerset Villa, in Durham, NC. Jule was also commissioned to work on several notable properties in nearby Hillsborough, NC, such as Carr’s Occoneechee Farmhouse, the Colonial Inn, and the Inn at Teardrops.
Meanwhile, Jule continued to oversee his crews painting Bull Durham signs. In late 1888, Blackwell’s Bull Durham Tobacco Co. was purchased by W. Duke & Sons – a major step in the formation of the American Tobacco Company, headed by James Buchanan “Buck” Duke. After forming the American Tobacco Company, Buck Duke relocated the company’s headquarters to New York, promising each of the department heads would become a “millionaire.” However, no amount of money or flattery could convince Jule to leave Kernersville and his beloved Körner’s Folly, and in response he quoted the Hindu proverb saying, “Better is one’s own path, though imperfect, than the path of another well-made.”
In September of 1889, Jule and Polly Alice had another child – a daughter, Doré. By 1891, the Reuben Rink Decorating and House Furnishing Company was flourishing, decorating prominent theatres, churches, auditoriums, colleges, and mansions of the southern United States. As his business became more successful it handled larger projects, including the 1892 renovation and decorating of the Kernersville Moravian Church with the help of Caesar Milch, German fresco artist, and his brothers, Joseph, and Henry Clay Körner (who came to be known as Little Reuben Rink).
Jule was, by many accounts, a devoted husband, an indulgent father, and generous to his family and the townspeople of Kernersville. He was also known as a stylish dresser, a perfectionist, and a great salesman. However, he was also described sometimes as quick tempered, headstrong, willful, or exacting. Most people called him eccentric, and many considered him a creative genius.