Candlestick 1940

Cornelius Christoffels made this watercolor painting of a candlestick, but it's more than just a simple object study. We must consider the context in which it was made. Christoffels was a Dutch-born American artist who was part of the Index of American Design, a New Deal program established in the 1930s. The Index aimed to document American decorative and folk arts, which were seen as being under threat from industrialization and mass production. This image thus becomes part of a larger cultural project of preservation. The candlestick, rendered with careful detail, represents a pre-industrial aesthetic and way of life. It speaks to a nostalgia for craftsmanship and a simpler past, and an anxiety about the future of American design and cultural identity. Understanding this image thus requires looking into the history of American art institutions, the social impact of the New Deal, and the cultural politics of the 1930s.