Kantpatroon voor een kleed van kloskant met goudenregentakken en -bloemen c. 1912

This is a lace pattern design with golden rain branches and flowers, made by Louise Wilhelmina van der Meulen-Nulle. The black lines create shapes that suggest flowers and leaves. There’s something very beautiful in the simplicity of the marks she’s using, and the way these combine to create a complex composition. You can imagine the whole lace laid out, with repeating patterns, the shapes of flowers and leaves and branches, all of it created through making and repeating these marks. The artist is really embracing the material. It looks like the design is rendered on paper, so she is thinking about the two-dimensional surface and how the lace will lie on a surface. When you look closely you see that the composition is made up of many different marks, some are dots, some are simple lines, and some are combined into small shapes. It’s as though the artist is discovering new possibilities and testing out new ideas with each mark. It reminds me of the work of Hilma af Klint. The use of pattern and nature to create a feeling of harmony and balance makes the two artists share an aesthetic language. Both artists seem more concerned with expressing ideas rather than fixed meanings.