Access a slow-looking exercise of this work.

Transcript
Narrator: Sonia Delaunay’s "Toy Box," from 1913, is a sculpture made of wood and painted with acrylic. Its body is a rectangular box around 8 inches tall, 14 inches wide, and 9 inches deep. It has an upper lid that is hinged on one of its long sides. The lid gently rises in the middle to form a barrel-shape with an arching crest along the two shorter sides. 

Brightly painted playful geometric shapes cover the entire surface. They include rectangles, triangles, quadrilaterals and other multisided polygons, as well as stripes of varying thicknesses. The shapes are oriented in different directions and some of their edges seem to overlap as if layered. Each shape is a single color, saturated yet muted. The box primarily features tomato red, cantaloupe orange, mustard yellow, navy, and mint green, and there are touches of blush, butter yellow, slate blue, toffee, mahogany, black, and creamy white.  

The paint has been applied to the surface in layers. Throughout the box, the top layer has chipped away to reveal speckles of an underlayer in cantaloupe orange. At some places along the sculpture’s edges, the paint has completely worn away to reveal its wooden form and the tiny nails that hold it together. In some areas, the blocks of color are vaguely transparent, gently veiling the orange color beneath. Wide brush strokes are often visible, indicating the daubs and directions of the artist’s hand. 

On close inspection, a few unique shapes on the box stand out because they suggest stylized representative forms, rather than abstract elements. On the top of the lid, a dark circle outlined thinly in red sits near one corner. The circle’s center is divided into three segments: One quarter is white, another quarter is black, and the remaining half is brown. There are other brown, white, and black circles on the lid: one bordered with a crescent shape at its edge; one with stripes beaming from it like rays, and one uniformly dotted in white. These represent cosmic forms such as moons, suns, and stars. These dark tones seem to recede within the brighter, colorful surroundings.  

Also on the top of the lid, a brown square sits tilted at an angle with a red triangle projecting from one side. This form is a simple building with a gabled roof. Nearby, a subtle brown arrow extends from one of the lid’s edges, indicating how the box opens. On the box’s sides, other shapes are possibly representational, such as a simplified windmill, a tree, and streetlights.  

Just beneath the lid, a thin horizontal stripe of blue runs along the box’s four sides, and a similar stripe runs along the base in tomato red and black. The lid’s four sides are painted with side-by-side blocks of color in cantaloupe orange, tomato red, creamy white, navy, and black. The blocks vary in width and height, getting taller where the lid arches upward on its two shorter edges. 

Adapted from Caitlin Glosser’s essay “Sonia Delaunay: Simultaneity Freed from Painting”, Delaunay produced work in diverse materials, including this wooden toy box, regardless of their perceived value. She explained, “[T]he true beauty of an object is not an effect of taste but is intimately tied to its function.”

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