Spade Bit c. 1936

Rose Campbell-Gerke, working without a date, made this drawing of a “Spade Bit” - a horse’s mouth gear - probably in watercolor. Look at how she rendered each individual piece of metal, each one a slightly different shade of brown, gray, or silver, and how each seems to connect to the next like links in a machine. I can imagine her looking, really looking, and slowly building up the image of this curious object. She must have been fascinated by the forms, their strange juxtapositions, and by the shadows that each cast on the next. It’s almost a portrait, right? I wonder if she thought of it that way. You could say that her lines are kind of tentative, or that the object isn’t set firmly against its pale background. For me, this gives the object a delicate quality, like it might float off the page at any moment. I think there’s a conversation happening here between folk art and still life, where everyday objects are raised to something worthy of deep contemplation.