Dress

Art Historical Context

This watercolor rendering of a dress, created around 1936 by Margaret Concha, belongs to the Index of American Design, a landmark Depression-era initiative of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. The Index commissioned artists nationwide to produce thousands of precise illustrations documenting American decorative arts, folk crafts, and historical objects, preserving a visual record of the nation’s material culture at a time of economic hardship. Concha used watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paperboard—the standard media of Index plates—to capture the garment’s form, fabric, and construction with documentary accuracy. These works were intended less as personal artistic statements than as scholarly archives, enabling later generations to study vanished or fragile examples of American design without handling the originals. Housed today at the National Gallery of Art, the Index represents a unique fusion of art, history, and public patronage. Concha’s contribution exemplifies how government-supported artists helped safeguard everyday objects of American life, offering viewers a window into evolving tastes, craftsmanship, and social history through the intimate details of clothing.

About the Artist

Margaret Concha · 1897–1994

Margaret Concha is an artist whose life and career remain incompletely documented in the major scholarly literature on art history. No confirmed birth or death dates have been established, and details of her training, nationality, and primary working period are not reliably recorded in available sources. The works attributed to her suggest engagement with the visual traditions of her era, though ...