Wall Pocket

Art Historical Context

Behold the delicate *Wall Pocket*, a vivid rendering by artist Beverly Chichester, created around 1938. This artwork captures a charming example of American folk art—a functional yet decorative wall-hanging pocket, originally measuring 24 inches high and 18 inches wide. Chichester's precise depiction, sized at 48.2 x 37.1 cm overall, showcases the object's whimsical form and intricate details, inviting viewers to appreciate everyday craftsmanship from America's past. As part of the Index of American Design (IAD), a groundbreaking Federal Art Project under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1935 to 1942, this piece belongs to a vast archive of over 18,000 watercolor renderings. Commissioned during the Great Depression, the IAD aimed to document and celebrate the nation's rich heritage of folk, craft, and decorative arts, preserving cultural treasures amid economic hardship. Chichester's contribution highlights the project's mission to elevate utilitarian objects into symbols of national identity. Crafted in watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on paperboard, the work exemplifies the IAD's hallmark style: meticulous realism blending artistic flair with documentary accuracy. Housed in the National Gallery of Art's collection, it offers a window into 20th-century efforts to safeguard American design traditions, reminding us how ordinary items can embody cultural resilience and beauty.

About the Artist

Beverly Chichester · 1904–1967

Beverly Chichester was an American artist active in the mid-1930s and early 1940s, whose contributions to the Index of American Design reveal an eye particularly drawn to the world of American toys, dolls, and childhood objects. Working in watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, and graphite on paperboard, Chichester produced a body of work distinguished by its delicacy of observation and its sympath...