Beaded Handbag

Art Historical Context

This watercolor and pen-and-ink drawing, Beaded Handbag, was created around 1938 by Ray Price as part of the Index of American Design. Launched during the Great Depression under the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, the Index commissioned artists to produce precise visual records of American folk art, crafts, and decorative objects, preserving the nation’s material culture at a time of economic hardship. Price’s rendering captures the intricate beadwork, colors, and textures of a handbag, an everyday item that reflects vernacular American design traditions. The combination of watercolor and fine pen lines was ideal for this documentary purpose, allowing artists to convey both artistic beauty and accurate detail without the original object itself. Today these Index works, housed at the National Gallery of Art, serve as a visual archive of American ingenuity. They invite viewers to appreciate how ordinary objects—once used and cherished—embody the creativity of past generations and the skill of the artists who recorded them.

About the Artist

Ray Price · 1855–present

Ray Price was an American artist active around 1935, renowned for his meticulous watercolor renderings of everyday American objects and crafts. His oeuvre, comprising 88 works held in the National Gallery of Art collection, captures the functional beauty of vernacular items from the late 1930s through the late 1940s. Little is known about Price's early life or formal training, as biographical deta...