Windows

         I like windows and doors.  I like them visually, architecturally, metaphorically, and in stories.  Here’s a little selection of relief block prints showing windows.  In all of these cases we’re on the inside looking out, and in all these cases the views are not necessarily the focus of the image, but rather we’re exploring the way the windows frame their views.

        The first piece by Charles Smith has lots of very fine wood engraving detail.  The curtains have a detailed pattern and the wall of the building across the street is entirely filled by close cross-hatching.  We can see people going about their business on the sidewalk outside, and the charming flowers on the windowsill.  This is a very ordinary scene, made into something special by an artist who observed, and transformed it into a block of wood,

then ink and paper.

        The second piece, by Dave Morgan, shows much less of the view: just a glimpse of greenery beyond the lightweight curtain.  This captures such beautiful light, and such a beautiful sense of serenity.  It’s described as a reduction print, but I think some areas must have been inked separately so that the golden brown of the floor or the greens of the plants were not rolled across the entire block.  It’s very cleverly done.

        Our third window is much simpler, and includes still less of a view, because now the focus is the man standing with his back to us at the window looking out.  It’s by Benvenuto Disertori, and you can see a couple more by him in my prior post Block Printmaker Disertori - funnily enough, including another view of another window.  As for this man, we don’t know what he sees, or what his feelings about the view might be.  He’s almost cartoon-like in his simplicity.  I like how there are no outlines between the man and the shadowed wall.  I’ve paired this one with a block print of my own

that also includes a silhouetted figure gazing out a window, from which no scene is visible to the person viewing the art.  They’re even positioned the same way in the frame of the picture.  And no, I had not seen Disertori’s piece when I made mine, but after all, other artists, too, have come up with similar compositions.

        I’ll finish off the collection of windows with two more of my own rubber block prints.  This first one is the view from a window in a small village in Lancashire, England, from a sketch I made because I especially liked the chimney pots.  (You can see I had trouble with the inking of this one, so I should probably scan another of the edition that’s a little blacker, but I kept this one because I kind of liked the misty look.)  For this one the view is almost the focus, except that I did choose to include the framing of the window and curtains instead of simply making a block print of the view all by itself.  And finally I have another window in which the view is visible, but indistinct, and the focus is really the collection of fancy little glass bottles on the windowsill.  I said I like windows, and another thing I like is little glass bottles!

        Do you have a favorite view from your own windows where you live?  Or a view you saw once in another place that’s stuck in your imagination?  How often do you actually stop and look out a window when you’re going by?

[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).]