Salt And Pepper Shaker, Designed 1935

While Charles Sheeler is best known as a painter of America’s industrial landscape, he also became involved with industrial design in the early 1930s. His archive (held by the Smithsonian Archives of American Art) includes drawings for a flower pot stand, cream and sugar set, smoking stand, and a wood rack. Finished products include a few fabrics, a glass tumbler manufactured by Steuben, and a silver teaspoon, as well as a salt and pepper shaker set, the same model as this example. These fabrics and manufactured objects were all exhibited at the Downtown Gallery’s show “Practical Manifestations of Art” in December 1934. [1] The Downtown Gallery, one of the first in Greenwich Village, introduced Sheeler to New York. The debut of these salt and pepper shakers in an art gallery speaks to the expansive nature of design in this period as the commercial increasingly blended with the artistic. Sheeler’s work in painting was distinguished in its precision and the sharp corners, smooth surfaces, and planar rigidity of these salt and peppers upholds this visual principle. The only decoration is in the utilitarian letter-shaped arrangement of holes that discriminates the salt from the pepper and allows the spices to flow out and flavor food.

[1] See Charles Sheeler Papers, Series 7: Artwork, ca. 1930s-1960s; boxes 4, 5, 8, 9, OV12-OV14.