Settle-table c. 1936

This is B. Holst-Grubbe’s ‘Settle-table’, we don’t know exactly when it was made or with what, but it's a technical drawing of a piece of furniture. The pale ground of the paper is punctuated by a series of bold orange lines that describe the front and side views of a convertible table-bench. The image is a kind of ghost of a thing, a rendering. It's a guide for how to build, but it's also a design in and of itself. I'm thinking about all the labor that isn't visible here: the labor of design, of math, of transcription. I wonder what Holst-Grubbe was thinking when they made this drawing, what other kinds of art they were interested in? We can see the hand of the artist in the details – the care taken to render the object in a way that is both accurate and aesthetically pleasing. Like a blueprint, but with a certain charm. It reminds me that art isn't just one thing, but many things. It's constantly in conversation with itself.