Pewter Coffee Pot c. 1936

Eugene Barrell made this pewter coffee pot drawing with graphite on paper. Can you imagine him, carefully studying every curve and shadow? I can almost feel the artist’s hand moving across the page, trying to capture the light reflecting off the metal. It’s a dance of observation and translation, turning a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional image. There is a love of realism and detail, it reminds me a little bit of those guys from the Dusseldorf School of Photography. The drawing is so precise, so clean, but you know, even in its exactness, there’s a kind of poetry. It’s like he’s not just showing us a coffee pot, but also the idea of a coffee pot. That objectness of the thing. We are lucky to have this.