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FEDERAL ART PROJECT
Works Progress Administration
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MAR 21 1931
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NATIONAL EXHIBITION
INDEX OF AMERICAN DESIGN
Fine Arts Gallery
Balboa Park
San Diego, California
September 1 to 30, 1937
INDEX OF AMERICAN DESIGN
This pictorial survey of the early American decorative and
useful arts has developed as a unit within the Federal Art Project,
to preserve for artists, designers and students outstanding forms
now in danger of being scattered or lost.
We all remember the family parlor of grandmother's day
with its horsehair furniture, rosewood whatnots, marquetry table
and a few treasured heirlooms of previous generations. Although
we have no desire to go back to the hitching-post or daguerrotype,
it still remains our duty to be a part of the general movement which
has shown itself in new attitudes toward our literature, our history,
our public characters and toward all the arts of our brief past.
The Index of American Design throughout the country is
recording those once familar objects, such as cigar store Indians,
early kitchen utensils, stoneware jugs, silver and pewter-ware, quilts
and costumes. In fact, its national conception has allowed the
coordination of our early American tolk arts through these water-
color renderings of the original articles, the latter existing now in
museums, private collections and homes, widely separated from
their native setting, which in many cases has been lost to us forever.
For example, it is known that many schooners on the Great Lakes
carried figureheads well through the last century, yet only a few of
these can now be found. One outstanding wood sculpture of this
order has been transported to Maine. Similarly in Southern
California the decorative painting of a Mission altar has been
discovered in a private museum over a hundred miles south.
The ship's figureheads and cigar store Indians referred to
above are exemplary of the decorative rather than fine arts and the
native ingenuity shown in such colorful subjects is likewise found
in small wood carvings, such as wooden buttermolds, cake molds,
a varied group of small wooden churns, sugar spoons, carved bowls
and platters and other early table or kitchen utensils, walking
sticks, boxes, and purely decorative carvings, all of which are often
of great interinsic intrest from the point of view of design and which
in final groupings will reveal essential and basic sequences in form.
As these have suggested whole areas of pioneer life and taste, early
American dolls and other toys, puppets and blackamoors find their
way into the Index.
The word " Index" as applied here has a broad but exact
significance. Obviously these pictorial records cannot be inclusive.
They can and do point to essential, native decorative and useful
arts just as the subject headings in the index of a book point to its
essential materials. Techniques have been devised by which color,
texture, volume, and form of the selected object are substantially
rendered. Careful attention is given to exactitude of proportion
and outline. The appearance of reality has often been superbly
achieved and frequently observers have been able to verify only by
the sense of touch that the mo anted plates were watercolor on
paper rather than the actual textile.
Where color is not an important item, photography plays
an important part in specia ized work, supplimenting the watercolor
drawings by showing in their entirety quilts and coverlets, large wall
surfaces, furniture, and by making available to Index artists other¬
wise inaccessable objects which can be recorded through the use of
photographs and color notes.
A primary requirement as to items for the Index is that they
have originated in America at a date previous to 1900. A data
sheet accompanies each plate, giving a history of the article and a
description of the materials used, its color, finish, etc. This data
and the original drawings are sent to the central Index office in
Washington, where the latter will eventually be reproduced in
portfolios and thus be made available to libraries and educational
institutions.
Established as part of the Federal Art Project by Holger
Cahill, National Director, the Index is undertaking what only a
government organization could so adequately accomplish a
compilation of American design sources similar to those already
existing in Europe and the defining of an American cultural tradi¬
tion which will without doubt vitally influence the future of
American design.
In Southern California, artistic productions of the Spanish-
Colonial period are naturally the most important contribution to v
the Index. Wall paintings, carved doors and hand-wrought
objects offer opportunity for a thorough study of the work of the
Indian neophytes under the direction of the Mission padres, while
early costumes of the Spanish pioneers and their silver - mounted
bits and spurs furnish beautiful examples of design in these fields.
Privately owned articles of early American origin will be
considered for recording by the Index of American Design, if
listed with any of the following offices.
FEDERAL ART PROJECT IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Exhibitions of prints, watercolors, oils, mural designs, sculpture
and other media may be arranged for public and semi-public insti¬
tutions such as colleges, high schools, elementary schools, libraries,
museums, civic organizations, etc., by request to Beatrice Judd Ryan,
State Supervisor of Exhibitions, Federal Art Project, W. P. A., 49
Fourth Street, San Francisco.
925 De la Vina Street
Santa Barbara
1634 Temple Street
Los Angeles
4689 Olivewood Avenue
Riverside
Room 13, Broadway Pier
San Diego
Nelson H. Partridge, Jr.
State Director for Southern California
Warren W. Lemmon
Supervisor, Index of American Design
EXHIBITIONS