Kalenderschild van de kalender voor 1915 van Kunstnijverheidsschool Quellinus 1914

Antoon Lüske made this calendar design for the Quellinus art school in 1915. You know, it makes you wonder about the kind of atmosphere that this calendar might have inhabited when it was first made. What colours were fashionable? Looking at the circular arrangement of zodiac signs around the date, I imagine the artist carefully inking each symbol, thinking about time, astrology, and the coming year. Maybe they were thinking about the war, the news, what to have for dinner that night. The symmetry and ornate detail of the design seem fitting for the decorative arts focus of the Quellinus school. I like to imagine that the artists were in conversation with each other, trading ideas and responding to the creative challenges of their time. The way they incorporated those swirls and zodiac signs around the centre date is just… *chef’s kiss*. It reminds me how art builds on art, artists borrowing from and riffing off each other across generations.