Ornamentaal vignet 1884 - 1957

This is Reinier Willem Petrus de Vries’s, ‘Ornamentaal vignet’, a wood block made sometime in the first half of the 20th century. The artist has used line in a couple of different ways here. Firstly, as a kind of architectural plan or set of instructions, and secondly, more directly as a tool to cut and remove material. I love that you can see the artist’s process so clearly in the finished piece. The texture of the wood grain is obviously there. Look closely and you can see how the artist has used a blade to follow their drawn lines, digging away the wood to create a relief pattern, a kind of backwards image, ready to be inked and printed. It reminds me a bit of the kinds of pattern making you see in folk art. I think this piece shows us that art is an act of conversation and translation. The artist takes a vision or idea, and translates it into a drawing, which then becomes a carving, which then becomes an image printed on a page. Each stage is a new interpretation, a new way of seeing.