Sandstone Holy Water Font

Art Historical Context

This delicate rendering captures a sandstone holy water font created as part of the Index of American Design, a Depression-era Works Progress Administration project that documented significant examples of American decorative and folk art. Rose Campbell-Gerke’s careful study records an early American religious object whose original block measured just six inches high and twelve inches square, with a ten-inch basin only three-and-a-quarter inches deep—small enough to have served a modest church or private chapel. Executed in watercolor, colored pencil, and graphite on paperboard, the drawing preserves both the stone’s textured surface and the quiet geometry of its square base and circular basin. Such precise documentation helped ensure that regional craftsmanship would survive even if the originals were lost or damaged, reflecting the Index’s larger goal of celebrating America’s artistic heritage. Today the work offers viewers a tangible connection to the modest yet meaningful objects that shaped everyday religious life in the United States. Its warm, measured tones invite close looking, reminding us how artists and historians together safeguard cultural memory.

About the Artist

Rose Campbell-Gerke · 1879–1964

Rose Campbell-Gerke (born 1882) was a California-born American artist who worked as a watercolorist for the Index of American Design, the New Deal-era federal project that systematically documented American folk and decorative arts. The National Gallery of Art holds sixty-six works by Campbell-Gerke in its collection, making her one of the more prolific individual contributors to the Index. Her bo...