Ornamentele rand met wapenschilden met dieren c. 1910

Bernard Willem Wierink made this ornamental border with coats of arms and animals with a printing technique. I like the way the red ink sits on top of the khaki ground; it’s not quite camouflage, but it almost feels like a military banner. I wonder if Wierink was thinking about heraldry when he made this? Look at how the coats of arms morph into these plant-like motifs, blurring the boundaries between the human-made and the natural. It’s like the artist is creating his own secret language here, maybe he was thinking about the symbolism of images? The red ink is uniformly flat, so it’s not the most exciting print I've ever seen, but you can imagine the artist working away, figuring out how to balance the image between the red and the khaki. I wonder what he was trying to say?