Maple Sugar Mold

Art Historical Context

George File’s *Maple Sugar Mold* is a precise watercolor and graphite rendering created around 1940 part of the Index of American Design. This ambitious federal project documented everyday objects of American craft and folk art, preserving visual records of items that might otherwise have been lost. The drawing faithfully captures an original wooden mold measuring 26 inches long, 2½ inches wide, and 1⅜ inches thick, used to shape maple sugar into portable forms. Such molds were practical tools in 19th-century American households, especially in regions where maple sugaring was a seasonal tradi...

About the Artist

George File

George File is an artist whose work survives in museum collections in sufficient number to indicate a sustained and productive career, even though the biographical details that might place him within a specific artistic tradition — his dates, his nationality, his training — have not been established in the sources currently accessible to researchers. His name appears consistently enough across ins...