Trivet c. 1941

This drawing of a trivet, or decorative iron stand, was made by Violet Hartenstein in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It depicts a cast-iron trivet, likely made to commemorate the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The object’s design features openwork lettering and a simple, functional form with three small legs. The original trivet would have been made by pouring molten iron into a mold – a mass production technique that made such objects widely accessible. The iron itself, extracted from the earth and transformed through intense heat, embodies both the power of industry and the labor required to fuel it. What’s interesting here is Hartenstein’s choice to depict it through drawing, a distinctly handmade medium. This elevates a common, mass-produced object to the realm of art, blurring the lines between the industrial and the artisanal, the functional and the decorative. It makes you think about how we assign value, and who gets to do the assigning.