Trivet c. 1942

This is Violet Hartenstein's rendering of a trivet; I imagine she made it in the late 20th century. Look at the precision of those lines, so carefully composed to produce an industrial object. Imagine Hartenstein’s hand guiding the pencil, patiently tracing the contours of the trivet. The star at the centre is lovely, with its surrounding circles, all embedded in a delicate grey wash. I wonder, did she choose to focus on this everyday object because of its intrinsic beauty, or was she drawn to its simple functionality? It makes me think about those early modernists, like Fernand Leger, who found abstraction in the machine age and celebrated the beauty of functional objects. The more I look at it, the more I see an homage to early industrial design. In any case, there's so much to admire in how Hartenstein has elevated it to a thing of beauty.