Decoratief ontwerp 1874 - 1945

This is a decorative design by Carel Adolph Lion Cachet. It's a drawing on paper, a plan for something else, maybe a textile or ceramic, or even a building. It’s like looking at the bones of a thing. I imagine him hunched over a table, his brow furrowed in concentration. He’s building up the design bit by bit, each line carefully placed, adjusting and refining as he goes. The grid showing through underneath is lovely. It's the structure, the armature that gives the design its underlying order. The little numbers running down the side, and the way the pencil lines vary in weight - they speak to the artist’s process, the push and pull between intention and intuition. You can see the pentimenti, the ghosts of earlier ideas, still visible beneath the surface. Like the best art, this drawing feels generative, like one thing could lead to another, inspiring a whole world of ornamentation and pattern making. We are all of us, standing on the shoulders of giants.