Silver Candle Snuffer c. 1936

Curator: Here we have Michael Fenga's "Silver Candle Snuffer," a pencil drawing created around 1936. Editor: Oh, wow! At first glance, it’s like stepping into a silent film—such elegant, obsolete technology meticulously rendered. I feel transported, in a very gentle, nostalgic way. Curator: Indeed. This work aligns with the academic art tradition, placing emphasis on precise detail and technical skill. Consider the socio-economic implications of domestic labor at the time and the object’s association with rituals. Candles played a different role in daily lives then, didn’t they? Editor: Absolutely! And beyond its utilitarian function, it seems imbued with a strange sense of beauty. Almost like a relic, or a prop from a theatrical production about the past. There's something inherently performative about snuffing out a candle flame, isn't there? This drawing, itself, performs this. Curator: I agree; it offers a tangible connection to societal history, particularly domestic practices of the period, raising broader questions about access, gendered labour roles, and class structures. One wonders who would have used this snuffer and the circumstances surrounding its use. What was their story? Editor: That is a fabulous point! And, because it's a pencil drawing, that stark, gray rendering makes the imagined light even more intense in my mind's eye, paradoxically. I can almost smell the tallow! It is weird that something designed to end a small bit of light ends up being the spark for this intense visual memory... Curator: Such an object also carries inherent tension: between illuminating and extinguishing, ritual and mundane labour. This object is presented out of its normal setting so as to better emphasize and highlight that dynamic, don't you think? Editor: Certainly. It seems to me that, at its heart, art really illuminates and highlights our own relationship to these tensions, to both light and darkness. What do you think? Curator: I appreciate your point of view; it challenges the way we conceptualize the role that common household objects had in people's day-to-day. Editor: Right! Now I'm starting to imagine other drawings by Fenga: perhaps a gleaming icebox, or a rotary telephone! A whole imagined world of perfectly rendered antique machinery! Thanks so much.