Cake Basket 1936

Mary Berner made this drawing of a cake basket in 1926. She renders a silver cake basket with colored pencils on paper; you can see the hatching and cross-hatching of the pencils, moving to and fro across the surface. I can imagine her thinking about how to capture the reflective quality of the metal, playing with soft pinks and silvers to bring the object to life on the page. There’s a softness to the image, a kind of gentle exploration of form and light. The lines are delicate, almost tentative, giving the basket a dreamy, ethereal quality. It’s like she’s not just drawing a cake basket, but also the idea of a cake basket – the potential for celebration, for sweetness. It’s a quiet, intimate piece, one that invites you to pause and appreciate the simple beauty of everyday objects. It reminds me of Morandi, and his exploration of the still life as a space for contemplation.