Tailor's Bench c. 1938

Manuel G. Runyan made this watercolor and graphite drawing of a tailor's bench, sometime between 1855 and 1995. It's like a portrait of a thing, this drawing, but also a little forensic, with the different views of the drawer pull floating above. I can almost feel Runyan, bent over the paper, carefully rendering the wood grain and the soft shadows that give the bench its form. You can see the original bench was over seven feet long, so Runyan had to really work to bring it down to this small size. What must he have thought about while re-creating it? Maybe about the hands that would have used it, and what the tailor would have made. The way Runyan handled the watercolor is interesting, too. It’s thinned out, so the colors are muted and transparent. The bench glows with a warm, earthy light. It reminds me of Fairfield Porter, but maybe with a touch of Edward Hopper's quiet observation. Each object is drawn in relation to another and held within a shallow space. Artists are always doing that, taking notes and sharing ideas, across time.