Ontwerp voor een kleed 1874 - 1945

Carel Adolph Lion Cachet made this rug design with pen and graphite on graph paper. It’s like a recipe, right? Or a secret code. Look at the way the dark ink pools and bleeds into the paper, giving the design a kind of loose, watery feel, even though the image itself is so rigid and symmetrical. The grid peeks through in places, a reminder of the underlying structure, but then the hand-drawn lines come in and mess it all up in the best possible way. It’s this tension between control and chaos that really gets me going. That one wiggly line near the bottom, is it a mistake? Or part of the plan? And how would that translate into the final rug? I love that this piece raises so many questions. It reminds me of the pattern paintings of Jennifer Bartlett, which also combine a grid with expressive marks, and which, like this design, leave plenty of room for the imagination.