Hangwerk van appels en een leeuwenkop en een festoen van pompoenen en een medaillon before 1897

Curator: Look at this elaborate print! "Hangwerk van appels en een leeuwenkop en een festoen van pompoenen en een medaillon," an engraving from before 1897 by an anonymous artist. It features two vertical panels densely packed with… well, quite a lot. My first impression is one of almost overwhelming abundance and contrasting moods. Editor: Abundance is right. I’m immediately struck by the clear dichotomy between the light and dark panels—almost as though the artist wanted to showcase the possibilities afforded by the engraving process. One’s all luminosity, the other shadowed and deep. You almost want to touch it to compare the texture, right? I mean, what inks, what kind of plates, and how did they pull the impression? Curator: That light, ethereal side makes me think of summer, or a fruitful harvest. There’s such a lightness to the apples, the delicate ribbon. Yet above, there’s this snarling lion's head. It’s so curious! Like nature attempting a gothic grimace. What do you see? Editor: Exactly! I notice the paper is thick, it absorbed that dark pigment really well to make those contrasting heavy shadows. I'm so curious about the production and labor and printing techniques used back then. Someone put time and elbow grease into this; you can tell in the subtle gradations. This pre-industrial process connects to material and its manipulation through tools, skill, and labor. It stands as a monument to human ingenuity. Curator: It makes me think about the temporality too, all that life represented on a sheet, a record frozen, isn't it? And look! We even have tiny songbirds perching in it. Editor: It is! Like capturing and categorizing nature and the tools and technologies used to convey its likeness. And the juxtaposition in materials, with fruit beside a hard, fixed column in the darker panel, really emphasize materiality. There's definitely something about the contrast in the use of negative and positive spaces in these designs and production capabilities that draws me to analyze this engraving as something beyond ornamentation and status and, instead, an ode to labor! Curator: Thinking about our relationship to objects. Very intriguing! The symbolic weight feels immense: mortality, status, celebration... Perhaps, with the garland, this would make a funeral offering for someone? That touch of life and death intermingled! Editor: So next time we come across similar material, we will probably think beyond traditional values to consider production, consumption, the social construction of making! Curator: And I will remember the sheer exuberance of these fruits rendered on this engraving sheet, all their implications, all their emotional weight... Quite something!