Wooden Cross used as Headstone
c. 1937
Medium
watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, and heightening on paperboard
Dimensions
overall: 36.4 x 26.6 cm (14 5/16 x 10 1/2 in.) Original IAD Object: 29"high
Classification
Index of American Design
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Index of American Design
Accession Number
1943.8.6906
Art Historical Context
This watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, and heightening rendering on paperboard, created around 1937 by Majel G. Claflin, captures a modest wooden cross used as a headstone. The original folk object stood just 29 inches high, and Claflin’s precise 14-by-10-inch sheet faithfully records its simple form, weathered texture, and rustic construction. Produced for the Index of American Design, the work belongs to a vast visual archive of American decorative and folk arts assembled during the Great Depression. The Index, a Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration, employed hundred...
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...