Decoratief ontwerp 1874 - 1945

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this design, probably a preliminary sketch, on graph paper. Imagine Cachet hunched over the desk, pencil in hand, lightly sketching and correcting. It's interesting to see the grid behind the ornament, that scaffolding supporting this delicate emerging form. It makes me wonder what the final product would be like. Would it follow these lines strictly, or would it be more free-flowing? You can see the ghost of something representational in the center, perhaps an animal, maybe a heraldic crest. There's a real push-and-pull between the organic, curving lines and the rigid geometry of the grid. It reminds me of some of Mondrian's early work, where you can see the representational form gradually dissolving into abstraction, a process of simplification and distillation. It's like Cachet is taking something from the world and turning it into pure visual information, a kind of code or notation. What is he trying to tell us? And how does this one drawing relate to his wider practice? It’s like glimpsing a fleeting thought in the artist’s mind.