Urn Design c. 1940

This urn design was made by Charles Goodwin, and it’s rendered in graphite and colored pencil on paper. It's a delicate work, especially when you know the intention is to create a container for something substantial. I can imagine Goodwin hunched over his drawing board, carefully measuring and sketching, thinking about proportion and the way light would play across the urn’s surface. There’s something so tender and human in that act of imagining something into being. The soft gradations of tone, achieved with colored pencil, give the design a sense of depth and volume. It’s not just a flat representation, but a three-dimensional object brought to life on the page. The addition of the square and fragmentary side view also adds a sense of the real. It reminds me that drawing is not just about observation, but also about invention, and planning to build something. It's a quiet act, but it carries with it the potential for something grand.