Silver Tankard c. 1936

This Silver Tankard exists as a drawing by Isidore Steinberg, who lived from 1855 to 1995. I'm interested in the lines. They’re so precise and technical, mapping out this object with a kind of dedicated focus. I imagine Steinberg hunched over his drafting table, carefully rendering each curve and detail. What was he thinking as he delineated the tankard's form? Maybe he was imagining the weight of it in his hand, the cool metal, the satisfying clink of a lid. There's this weird tension between representation and the thing itself. I can see an inscription and a kind of heraldic crest with a deer. There are even extra drawings around it. The whole composition reads like a design document, but with a ghostly beauty. Each mark captures not just the object's form, but also a little bit of Steinberg's attention, his hand, his vision. The end result has a strange beauty!