Small Rush Bottom Chair

Art Historical Context

Behold the delicate rendering of *Small Rush Bottom Chair* by Edith Magnette, created around 1936. This intimate drawing, executed in wash, graphite, pen, and ink on paper (30.5 x 22.9 cm), captures the humble elegance of a traditional American vernacular chair—standing 27 7/8 inches high with a seat widening from 12 3/4 inches at the back to 16 inches at the front. Magnette's precise lines and subtle washes evoke the chair's sturdy Shaker-like simplicity, highlighting its woven rush seat and turned wooden elements. As part of the Index of American Design—a groundbreaking WPA Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1942—this artwork documents everyday American craftsmanship amid the Great Depression. Artists like Magnette produced over 15,000 renderings to preserve folk and decorative arts threatened by industrialization, ensuring cultural heritage endured. Rush bottom chairs, prized for their durability and breathability, trace roots to early colonial workshops, embodying self-reliant Yankee ingenuity. Today, housed in the National Gallery of Art's Index collection (Department CG-W), Magnette's piece bridges art and history. Its meticulous technique not only idealizes the object but invites us to appreciate the anonymous makers who shaped America's material culture. A testament to resilience, it reminds visitors of design's quiet poetry in daily life.

About the Artist

Edith Magnette · 1869–1947

Edith Magnette was an American artist who contributed to the Index of American Design during the late 1930s and early 1940s, one of the New Deal's most ambitious cultural programs. Operating under the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project, the Index employed artists across the United States to produce meticulous watercolor renderings of American decorative arts and material culture f...