Account Book Ledger 1835 - 1856

This is John Carlin's Account Book Ledger, made with ink on paper and pasteboard. At first glance, we see a heavily patterned cover, almost like a marbled effect, with looping shapes in subdued greens, browns, and hints of red. This immediately evokes a sense of age and history. Focusing on the cover's design, we see a network of organic forms that spread across the surface. This all-over pattern denies a central focal point, challenging traditional compositional hierarchies. The marbling effect, traditionally used for endpapers and book covers, becomes the primary visual language here, hinting at the importance of surface and texture. Considered through the lens of structuralism, the book itself functions as a signifier. It represents not just an object but a system of accounting and record-keeping. However, the almost chaotic marbling destabilizes the supposed orderliness of financial documentation, introducing an element of chance and unpredictability. The Account Book Ledger invites us to think about how visual forms can simultaneously uphold and undermine established meanings, revealing the complex interplay between structure and chaos, order and disorder.