Bishop Hill: Mangle
c. 1936
Medium
watercolor and graphite on paper
Dimensions
overall: 22.2 x 34.4 cm (8 3/4 x 13 9/16 in.) Original IAD Object: 30 1/4" long; 3 5/8" wide; 2 1/2" high
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Index of American Design
Accession Number
1943.8.8735
Art Historical Context
Wellington Blewett'sBishop Hill: Mangle (c. 1936) is a delicate watercolor and graphite rendering on paper, measuring 22.2 x 34.4 cm, capturing the intricate details of a traditional wooden laundry mangle. This humble household tool, with its original dimensions of about 30 inches long, rolling paddles for pressing fabrics—a testament to 19th-century American ingenuity in everyday crafts. Housed in the National Gallery of Art's Index of American Design collection, it evokes the practical beauty of vernacular objects from Bishop Hill, Illinois, a historic Swedish utopian community founded in th...
About the Artist
Wellington Blewett
**Wellington Blewett (1875–1962)** was a Canadian-born American artist renowned for his meticulous watercolor renderings of everyday American folk objects. Active primarily in the late 1930s, Blewett contributed significantly to the Index of American Design, a Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) that sought to document the nation's vernacular artistic heritage through...