Button Hook c. 1938

Editor: This is Frank Fumagalli’s "Button Hook," created around 1938, using watercolor and drawing techniques. It feels incredibly simple and yet quite elegant, with this single tool centered on the page. As you look at it, what stands out to you? Curator: It is deceptively simple, isn’t it? A button hook—an almost archaic tool. Consider its function: to fasten buttons, often on garments worn close to the body. What does it signify about privacy, or the ritual of dressing? This wasn't clothing someone throws on. There was almost a level of intimate care necessary. Editor: So the tool itself represents a specific type of care and intimacy that maybe we've lost. Curator: Exactly! It’s a powerful, and understated, symbol of a bygone era. The artist chose to portray it isolated, almost as a relic, drawn with precision. Even the colour – muted purple – evokes a certain nostalgia. Do you see the elongated shape as symbolic? Editor: Now that you mention it, it does resemble certain wands and ritualistic objects... even a scepter. It suggests a transfer of power. In the everyday application, someone used that tool to carefully assume control of their own appearance, of their presentation to the outside world. Curator: Precisely. It’s the tool's former importance, distilled and amplified. It serves as a visual echo to what would become commonplace practices that perhaps required less active self-mediation, less consideration and preparation for one's place in society. What would a drawing of this mean to someone living through the Great Depression, I wonder? Editor: This really highlights how something as mundane as a tool can become a vessel of cultural memory. Thanks for the deep dive! Curator: My pleasure. It reminds us to see past the surface.