Bandontwerp met een hoofdletter R 1884 - 1952

Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries made this design for a ‘Bandontwerp met een hoofdletter R’ using pencil and watercolour. It's all about the flow here, isn’t it? Look how the red "R" pops, hugged by these elegant, almost Art Nouveau curves and lines. The colours are muted, like old gold and faded rose. There’s a delicacy to the application, a thinness that lets the paper breathe underneath, and you can see the pencil grid peeking through! The way the gold fans out from the central letter reminds me of petals, or maybe even peacock feathers. It's controlled but there's an obvious freedom in the design. De Vries reminds me a bit of Hilma af Klint, in that he uses the alphabet as a starting point for something else, something that verges on decoration but hints at deeper meanings. Ultimately, it’s about the process, the simple act of making marks and finding where they lead.