Zoar Stove c. 1938

This is Fritz Boehmer's drawing of a Zoar Stove, rendered with graphite and watercolor. What I notice first is the surface, how he’s built up layers to create the illusion of a metallic texture and depth. Boehmer isn’t just showing us a stove, he’s inviting us to consider the objectness of the stove, how it sits in space and interacts with light. There’s a real sense of volume, even though it’s just lines on paper. Look at how the light falls on the cylindrical form of the stove, creating a soft gradient from light to shadow. That dark grey tone, almost like a cloudy sky, gives the stove a kind of weight, a solidity. I think the image is also interesting in relation to folk art. While it's an industrial design drawing, the attention to detail and the almost naive perspective give it a quirky, folksy charm. It reminds me a little bit of some of the Shaker furniture drawings, spare and functional, but also strangely beautiful.