Painted Wooden Candle Stick, with Grooves andCircles

Art Historical Context

This delicate rendering captures a painted wooden candlestick crafted in nineteenth-century America, originally standing nineteen inches tall and adorned with rhythmic grooves and circular motifs. Created around 1937 by Majel G. Claflin, the work belongs to the Index of American Design, a federal initiative that employed artists to document the nation’s rich tradition of folk and decorative arts during the Great Depression. Through precise observation, the drawing preserves details of everyday objects that might otherwise have been lost, celebrating the ingenuity of anonymous craftspeople who ...

About the Artist

Majel G. Claflin

Majel G. Claflin (1893–1941) was an American artist best known for her meticulous documentation of Spanish Colonial folk art from northern New Mexico. Active in Taos, New Mexico, during the late 1930s, she produced watercolor renderings as part of the Index of American Design, a Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration that aimed to catalog regional American crafts and tradition...