Cherry Pitter c. 1940

Editor: So here we have Archie Thompson's "Cherry Pitter" from around 1940, done in pencil. It's surprisingly…ominous, I think? It’s just a simple kitchen gadget, but rendered with such sharp lines and heavy shading. What do you see in this drawing? Curator: Ominous is good! It's a humble object, rendered with a kind of precision bordering on obsession. The drawing itself is a beautiful relic. Archie's intensity – it's almost like a devotional act, elevating the mundane to something worthy of our complete, unwavering attention. Editor: Devotional, yes! Almost like an icon, or some kind of futuristic alien artifact. Why a cherry pitter, though? Curator: Right? It's a question of choices, isn't it? The choice to painstakingly render *this* object. Perhaps it spoke to a longing for simpler times, the repetitive task of pitting cherries a form of meditation. Or perhaps...it was the sheer mechanical elegance, a silent testament to human ingenuity, like a forgotten poem. Editor: It does look oddly elegant, like something from a Jules Verne novel. All those curves and levers! Curator: Exactly! And what did the cherry pitter represent? Abundance, summers, labor? What kind of cherry deserts it contributed to, who enjoyed eating it? So, how does knowing this contribute to how we understand the work of art? Does the beauty here belong to Thompson, to the cherry pitter, or does it only become present between the viewer and artwork? Editor: I hadn't thought about the cherry desserts. Food *always* matters! Thanks for expanding the recipe... uh, the picture, for me. Curator: Likewise! It's that exchange that breathes life into these relics, like that old cherry pitter on that day in 1940. The object may seem so random; when we step in, it blooms again.