'Odeur' in sierletters 1889 - 1894

Antoon Derkinderen rendered this ornamental design for the word 'Odeur', meaning 'scent' or 'smell', in fine pencil on paper. Though undated, we can relate it to Derkinderen’s Dutch context, sometime between 1880 and 1920. The lettering references the history of the illuminated manuscript. You can see the attention to detail, and the way he has overlaid the letters onto a grid structure. Derkinderen’s draftsmanship represents the Arts and Crafts movement’s reaction against industrialization and mass production. This movement took different forms in different countries. In the Netherlands, artists looked to their own history, as well as to socialist ideals, in search of a more authentic form of art and life. The artist associations and workshops of the period are examples of the institutional forms that these new artistic and social attitudes could take. The history of art is the history of its relationship to other social and cultural forms. Historians look at the way art is produced, collected, and displayed, using a wide variety of resources to do so.