Ontwerp voor aardewerk decoratie: bloemkool en savooiekool Possibly 1917 - 1921

Theo Colenbrander made this design for earthenware decoration with watercolor, probably sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. He really went to town with his cabbages! The whole thing feels so deliberate, almost architectural. I’m struck by the way Colenbrander has approached the watercolor, with flat areas of thin color, kind of like a coloring book. It’s all line and no atmosphere. It’s so precise, so controlled. Look at the little blue touches, the way he lets the colors bleed ever so slightly. He’s got all those tiny little shapes nesting inside each other, building up the volume of the cabbages. And then there's that weird, sandy color he’s chosen for the background wash – a total mood-setter. It feels like he might have looked at the work of someone like Gustav Klimt. You know, those decorative patterns, that love of detail, but with a completely different sensibility. It’s like he’s saying, “Let’s make vegetables fancy.”