Door Handle with Thumb Press c. 1937

Curator: This graphite and pencil study presents a door handle with a thumb press, dating from around 1937, by Philip Johnson. What springs to mind for you? Editor: Immediately, a sense of cool functionality. There's an elegance in its geometry but it still feels... utilitarian. Is it meant to be mass-produced? Curator: Possibly. Johnson was a staunch modernist. Everything to his eye was about efficiency, pure form reflecting the material world, stripped bare. Here, the graphite mimics, perhaps, the gleam of brushed metal, steel or aluminum. The design seems pared-down yet decorative too. Editor: Right. The thumb press feels almost baroque in its shape, clashing slightly with the streamlined handle itself. But consider the making: someone painstakingly drew each line, shading to mimic the texture, the way the metal might be cast. The labor becomes almost sculptural. Curator: Indeed. And in seeing that labor, perhaps the intention also shifts, no longer pure modernism, but softened with human touch, more about feeling than unyielding function. Editor: Precisely! This drawing highlights the intersection of art, design, and craft in industrial objects, which raises crucial questions about the value attributed to certain forms of labor and its translation to product and marketability in mass culture. Curator: I like how it draws you in; it asks for human interaction at the core. Makes you think how many times you might touch it throughout one day in passing… perhaps it suggests deeper meaning regarding entering new spaces, or just life’s small thresholds. Editor: Exactly. The beauty often lies hidden within that material dialogue; if Johnson was going for an 'industrial' design object or something artistic with "deeper meaning" we must remember the many makers it takes, that makes his "art," an open, socially wrought dialogue to this day. Curator: Ultimately it reveals how everyday function and striking beauty can, through the simplest rendering, be combined to capture something powerful. Editor: True. And also make us question who has access to that beauty. Thanks to the labor of art-making and art-appreciation alike.