Photograph, Stahls Chain-nose Pliers (Over Actual Size), from Eskilstuna, Sweden, $2.49

There is one other image of this object. See our image rights statement.

See more objects with the tag art, public, symmetry, black and white, tool, curving line, photography, journalism, pointed.

See more objects with the color darkslategrey grey dimgrey or see all the colors for this object.

Object Timeline

	We acquired this object.
-0001	We photographed this object.
1955	Work on this object began.
2014	We exhibited this object.
2015	We photographed this object.
2025	You found it!

Photograph, Stahls Chain-nose Pliers (Over Actual Size), from Eskilstuna, Sweden, $2.49

This is a Photograph. It was photographed by Walker Evans.

This object is not part of the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection. It was able to spend time at the museum on loan from The J. Paul Getty Museum as part of Tools: Extending Our Reach.

It is dated 1955. Its medium is gelatin silver print.

In the July 1955 issue of Fortune Magazine, the American photographer Walker Evans celebrated iconic hand tools in a photographic essay, "Beauties of the Common Tool." Referring to the hardware store as an "offbeat museum show," Evans praised the "undesigned" forms of classic tools and chided the "design-happy manufacturers" who dared to change the least detail. Tin snips, a bricklayer’s trowel, chain-nose pliers, and a crate opener were, in Evans’s eyes, standards of "elegance, candor, and purity." Ultimately, what Evans valued was the design, the construction that resulted from the maker’s understanding of function, efficiency of form, and material.

It is credited The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 84.XM.956.1057.