[Picture: Seeds of Love, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]
November 6, 2024
Keep Loving
November 1, 2024
National Author's Day
[Pictures: Photo by AEGN, 2024;
Graphic that was shared around on social media without attribution, so unfortunately I don’t know who designed it.]
October 28, 2024
Words of the Month - The Quick and the Dead
cut to the quick - to injure someone deeply (usually figuratively - and old-fashioned)
quick - the tender part under your fingernails, especially if you chew your nails down to the quick.
quicksand - sand that can move and swallow objects as if it were alive
quicksilver - metallic mercury, which is fluid at room temperature. Archaic in scientific use, but still encountered in its metaphorical sense to describe things that are shifting, changeable, and hard to predict.
deadbolt - a kind of lock that uses a solid bolt, rather than one with a spring. You can see again the sense that movement is “living” while anything that doesn’t move by itself is “dead.” (1808)
deadlock - although it was used in 1808 as a synonym of deadbolt, the sense of “complete standstill, stalemate” came first, from about 1779.
deadpan - a method of delivering humor without expression, the dead here is once again the sense of “stillness or lack of vivacity,” while the pan is slang for “face.” It comes from the USA in the early 20th century.
deadline - although the definition “time limit” dates to 1920 in newspaper jargon, it may have been influenced by an earlier quite literal usage from about 1865: a line inside the perimeter of a Confederate prison, at which any prisoner who touched the line was to be shot dead.
undead - this originally meant “not dead,” as its elements would imply. Not until the very end of the nineteenth century did it come to be applied to vampires and such that are not exactly dead, but not exactly alive either.
And just for a bonus, two words from the Old French/Latin root for “dead”…
mortgage - literally “dead pledge,” because the contract “dies” when the debt is paid in full, or when the payments can no longer be made.
amortize - literally “to make dead,” again because of the idea of reaching a permanent end to a contract or ownership.
All these words certainly remind us, just as Hallowe’en itself might do, that “in the midst of life we are in death.”
[Pictures: Adam tills the earth, woodcut by Hans Holbein, 16th century (Image from Wikimedia Commons);
Der Kandelgiesser, woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568 (Image from Yale University Library).]
October 23, 2024
Spooky Night
[Picture: Wind in the Elms, woodcut by Howard Cook, 1926 (Image from Smithsonian American Art Museum).]
October 18, 2024
Autumn Magic
[Picture: Aspen Ridge, linocut by Angie Coleman (Image from The New Leaf Gallery).]
October 14, 2024
Working
[Picture: The Workers, wood block print by Leopoldo Méndez, 1932 (Image from The Loeb Museum at Vassar);
Little views of my rubber block prints A Tree Made of Night, Autumn Fairy (Oaky Nutkin), and Penguin of Peace, by AEGNydam.]
October 4, 2024
Views of Space
[Pictures: Spacial Orbits, relief print by Clara MacGowan, 1936 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);
The night that changes not, illustration by W.B. MacDougall from Songs of Love and Death by Margaret Armour, 1896 (Image from British Library Flickr);
The Earth in Space, wood engraving from Chambers’s Alternative Geography Readers, 1898 (Image from British Library Flickr);
Looking Into Space, wood block print by Werner Drewes, 1934 (Image from Drewes Fine Art).]
September 30, 2024
Words of the Month - Plain Sailing (Part I)
[Pictures: Frontispiece of General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation by John Dee, hand colored woodcut, 1577 (Image from Christie’s);
Dutch Clipper Ship, wood block print on postcard by anonymous artist, 1947 (Image from The Magic Postcard Store);
Ship Bonetta Salem Departing from Leghorn, woodcut by John Held, Jr., first half 20th c. (Image from Princeton University Art Museum).]
September 25, 2024
Windows
[Pictures: Charleston Window, wood engraving by Charles W. Smith, 20th c (perhaps 1920s?) (Image from Newfields);
Springtime Window, color reduction woodcut by Dave Morgan, 2021 (Image from The New Leaf Gallery);
Man at a Window, woodcut by Benvenuto M. Disertori, before 1968 (Image from Davis Museum at Wellesley College);
Nightshade in the Sunlight, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2007 (Image from AEGN, now sold out);
Window at Yealand Conyers, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 1998 (Image from NydamPrints);
Small Glass Bottles, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2017 (Image from NydamPrints).]