Coverlet c. 1940

This painted rendering of a coverlet was made by Cornelius Christoffels, who lived from 1879 to 1960. I can just imagine Cornelius, brush in hand, carefully recreating this design in paint. The original coverlet, we're told, was over six feet square - that’s quite a thing! Here he presents us with a scaled down copy, a painted image of the textile, a kind of miniature monument to the practice of weaving, where each tiny intersection of horizontal and vertical feels considered, precious almost. The limited palette of muted grays and blacks, the squared grid, the way the pattern shifts and reasserts itself – it has the feeling of an Agnes Martin painting! Perhaps Cornelius understood the connection between the patient work of weaving and the repetitive mark-making in painting. Each thread laid down, each brushstroke applied, building a surface, a texture, a world.