New Künstlichs Modelbuch (Page 42 recto) 1600

Curator: Taking a look here at a page from Bernhard Jobin’s "New Kúnstlichs Modelbuch", around 1600. This particular image is known as Page 42 recto. Editor: Oh, instantly it reads to me like a strange, pixilated fairytale! Stark, and almost unsettlingly symmetrical. Is it a drawing? A woodcut? Curator: Actually, it's a print—presumably intended as a guide, of course, for embroidery or perhaps lacework. I am not even sure the precise method used to make the artwork. Editor: Ah, so practical. Yet, consider the labor. Imagine the repetitive action of creating such detailed work with such simple tools, transferring designs from paper to cloth. The geometric elements and repeating motifs speak volumes about early manufacturing processes—a precursor to modern digital reproduction, wouldn't you say? Curator: Absolutely. Though, beyond the material reality, I sense something quite magical happening here. A garden, a stylized couple…almost robotic in their construction, yet romantic somehow. It’s both alien and strangely familiar, as if stitched from dreams themselves! Editor: Dreams perhaps rendered with very regimented threads! To produce the desired pattern means embracing very defined structural principles, like those geometric elements that make each of these distinct features into unified wholes—the kind of labor that goes into, say, carpet weaving. Curator: True, true. And there’s something wonderfully subversive about that too. Taking these precise, regimented tools and forms and allowing for individual expression. It shows both restriction and unlimited creative expression, all in a simple guide! Editor: Perhaps there’s some hope in those threads for our digitally mediated existence, no? Some sense of the maker’s hand still clinging to each little stitch, or pixel? It’s a very tactile experience just considering that labour that lies hidden, unseen in plain sight. Curator: Indeed. Even today this piece hums with human touch, in all of the complexity and nuance.