Meat Chopper

Art Historical Context

This delicate rendering of a meat chopper, created around 1936 by Thomas, belongs to the Index of American Design, a New Deal initiative that commissioned artists to document everyday objects and decorative arts from America’s past. Produced during the Great Depression, the project aimed to celebrate the nation’s material heritage and provide employment for artists by creating a visual archive of vernacular craftsmanship. Holloway employed a precise combination of watercolor, graphite, and gouache on paper to capture the tool’s worn wooden handle and sturdy metal blade with remarkable clarity. Measuring just over 11 by 8 inches, the work demonstrates the Index’s emphasis on technical accuracy and subtle tonal modeling, techniques that allowed the rendering to serve both as an artistic study and a reliable historical record. Today housed in the National Gallery of Art, this piece invites viewers to appreciate the quiet beauty found in ordinary kitchen implements while preserving a snapshot of American design traditions from the early twentieth century.