Toleware Bread Tray 1935 - 1942

Curator: Here we have a watercolor rendering of a toleware bread tray, created sometime between 1935 and 1942, attributed to Mildred Ford. Editor: It strikes me as both humble and fanciful at the same time. The form of the tray looks simple, almost industrial, but then it's decorated with these charmingly naive fruit motifs. Curator: The toleware tradition itself, the craft of painting on tin, is fascinating. Initially functional objects like these were often elevated through decorative motifs—think folk traditions carrying symbolic weight in everyday life. The apple and other fruit often symbolize abundance, hospitality... even knowledge depending on the context. Editor: It’s interesting how this piece sits between handcraft and potential mass production. Toleware lends itself to duplication. I'm curious about the artist’s process here. Was Ford copying an existing bread tray design, or developing an original concept for production? The watercolors giving it this light airy feeling...I bet the metal piece would be bolder, more forceful! Curator: Given the period, one can imagine the social role of decorative arts offering small moments of beauty in the home—comfort in austerity perhaps? Those colors are so appealing, vibrant, yet the metal itself hints to wartime constraints on certain luxury goods. Editor: And consider who might have owned this type of bread tray. Not the very poor. But likely a middle-class aspiration. It embodies a particular domestic ideal. Did Ford herself see it as "art," or as just a pattern to be replicated by factory workers? Curator: Perhaps that ambiguity is precisely what makes it intriguing. It’s a window into a world where functionality and symbolism were intricately entwined. The artist's labor in rendering this decorative object seems itself meaningful. Editor: Yes, a compelling object of production of cultural and societal ideas of home and the everyday!