Pa. German Shaving Basin c. 1937

Charlotte Angus made this watercolor rendering of a Pa. German Shaving Basin. She painted these basins with pale washes of ochre, rust, and olive green, and then she overlaid them with bolder calligraphic flourishes. I’m trying to imagine what it was like for her, painting these objects. She must have been really taken with these shaving basins—taken enough to paint them! I wonder if she felt an affinity for the person who made them. There is something really tender and lovely about copying someone else’s art. It’s like a form of translation, a way of understanding someone else’s creative process. I can imagine her tracing the curves of the bird and thinking about the person who first painted it, maybe centuries ago. It makes me think about how artists are in an ongoing conversation across time, riffing on each other's ideas. And of course, an exchange of ideas is what it is all about, inspiring one another’s creativity.