In the 1930s, while working in Philadelphia as part of the Federal Art Project that provided work for artists during the Great Depression, Dox Thrash developed the first significant new printmaking process in more than one hundred years by using synthetic silicon carbon, known as carborundum. A hard chemical compound used today in electronics, car brakes, and even bulletproof vests, carborundum powder was used in the lithography printing process. Thrash explained how he and a colleague realized a new use for it: “I got some of the carborundum powder they used in grinding lithograph stones and rubbed it into a copper plate with an old flatiron. I got a queer, rough surface. Well, this fellow [artist Hugh] Mesibov looks over my shoulder, and says, ‘Hey, I bet you could work lines into that.’ I took a burnisher [a knifelike tool] and sketched a nude.” The resulting process produces rich, dark images.

This carborundum print resembles two watercolors by Thrash with a similar composition. These are traditionally interpreted as depicting a family looking toward new opportunities during the Great Migration of Black people moving north from the southern United States in the early decades of the 1900s. Dox himself had moved north from his native Georgia in 1908.

Image Description: A relief print showing a triangular composition of a family rendered in soft, chalk-like black tones against a light background. A standing woman holds up a cloak or similar garment with both hands while also holding an infant with her right arm. A man sits or kneels on the ground in front of her. Both adults are seen in profile, looking off to our right, outside of the frame.