Cobbler's Table with Candle Stand

Art Historical Context

**Cobbler's Table with Candle** *Ella Josephine Sterling, c. 1936* Watercolor, graphite, colored pencil and some heightening on paper, 35.2 × 24.9 cm (13⅞ × 9⅞ in.) *Index of American Design, National Gallery of Art* Step into the workshop of early American craftsmanship with Ella Josephine Sterling's meticulous rendering of a *Cobbler's Table with Candle Stand Created around 1936, this artwork a humble shoemaker's workbench—likely an 18th- or 19th-century artifact—complete with its sturdy wooden form, leather tools, and integrated candle stand for illuminating late-night labors. Sterling's piece evokes the daily life of colonial tradespeople, where such tables were essential hubs for mending soles and stitching communities together. As part of the *Index of American Design*, a Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1942, this work exemplifies a national effort to document and celebrate America's decorative arts heritage during the Great Depression. Sterling employed watercolor for vibrant wood grains and textures, graphite for precise lines, colored pencil for subtle highlights, and heightening for a lifelike dimensionality on paper. These techniques created hyper-realistic studies that preserved vanishing folk objects for posterity, blending artistic skill with scholarly documentation. Today, it reminds us of the ingenuity in everyday American design.

About the Artist

Ella Josephine Sterling · 1908–2006

Ella Josephine Sterling is an artist whose biographical details remain incompletely documented. No confirmed birth or death dates have been established, and her nationality and the circumstances of her artistic training are not clearly recorded in surviving historical sources. With forty-six works attributed to her in museum collections, Sterling was clearly a productive artist. The full name, pr...