Ontwerp voor een ex libris met monogram CWL 1874 - 1945

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this design for a bookplate, or ex libris, using pencil and watercolour. You can see the grid underneath. It's a working drawing, a place for playing around with ideas. I'm drawn to the top rectangle, an abstract design in black and grey wash. It looks like two seahorses facing each other, their tails swirling to fill the frame. The ink is applied in loose, fluid strokes, almost like a Rorschach blot. It’s a study in contrasts, the dark ink against the white of the paper, the organic shapes contained within a rigid geometric border. It reminds me of the work of Hilma af Klint, another artist who combined abstraction with a deep interest in symbolism and the occult. Like Klint, Cachet seems to be using abstraction to explore hidden meanings, inviting us to decipher his personal visual language. Ultimately, the beauty of art lies in its ambiguity.