The WPA & the Golden Age · The Public Good
Handle with care
Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1943
What it is
A silkscreened road-safety poster from 1943, pairing a traffic signal with a steering wheel under the words "Handle with care." It carries no artist's name and comes out of the Work Projects Administration's poster shops.
Why it matters
The WPA poster units printed thousands of these civic notices through the Depression; by 1943, as the program wound down and the war took over, safe driving had become a manpower argument as much as a courtesy. Borrowing three words off a freight crate turns the driver into cargo worth protecting, and the Library of Congress dates this one to the very end of the WPA's life.
What to notice
The flat, unshaded blocks of color with no tonal gradients are the silkscreen tell, one clean pass of ink per hue.
Treat the body behind the wheel like something breakable, because it is.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Political poster
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration Poster Collection, 1943
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 00652398 (digital ID cph.3g08142)
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
