A large-format mixed-media still life of mechanical or electronic objects — the only large-format still life in the collection, the only machine subject in the collection, and among the most compositionally surprising works. The dominant form is a boxy object that reads as a toaster, radio, or small appliance: a rectangular form with a curved top, the interior divided into sections with circles and stripes suggesting control elements. Adjacent to this main form at the left is a trapezoidal shape, possibly a tape reel housing or a panel, filled with vertical lines and circles. At the upper left, a small H-shaped or bracket object. The whole arrangement is rendered in green ink with yellow and teal watercolor washes.
The machine objects — domestic appliances rendered at large format with careful structural attention — represent the most unexpected subject in the collection. Sidney has applied the same observational attention to a toaster or radio that he applies to the human figure: the structure understood, the volumes described, the surfaces differentiated. The green ink gives the mechanical forms the same botanical quality as the green chalk figures and the green contour nude, the machines rendered in the color of growing things.
The large format — 25 by 33.5 at horizontal orientation — gives the still life objects a monumental presence that domestic appliances rarely achieve. A toaster at this scale is not a kitchen object but a formal subject, its geometry and surface as worthy of sustained attention as a nude or a landscape. This is the collection's most unexpected claim: that the machine, the domestic object, deserves the same sustained observational drawing practice as the body.