The Pattern Library
Each pattern begins as one painting. It then travels — onto a card, a sheet of wrapping, the cover of a journal, a length of linen. Pick a painting and see everywhere it went.
One painting, many objects.
Working this way is slower than drawing to fit. A painting made for a 4¼ by 5½ card rarely tiles across a 20-inch sheet of wrapping without being re-thought, so most patterns get painted twice — once small, once large — from the same pressed specimen.
The upshot is that a pattern hangs together across the whole department. Send the card, wrap the gift in the matching sheet, tie it with the ribbon, and it reads as one thing rather than three.
“Botanist took four months. There are ninety-one species on that sheet and every one of them grows in the valley.”Marlowe Ash · on the 2019 plate
Patterns are retired, not deleted. When a run sells out we note it in the book and the painting goes back in the flat file — sometimes it comes out again five years later on something else entirely.