OAK LEAVES IN
PINK AND GREY (1929)
by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Quilt Notes:
In print, ANTIQUE TILE BLOCK first appeared in quiltdom in Nancy Cabot's column in the Chicago Tribune on May 3, 1938. A seemingly overly simple design, entirely composed of squares and rectangles. And yet it's exactly the type of block that allows for some of the most interesting play of contrasting colors as well as a good mix of solids and more exotic print fabrics. In Cabot's drawing, also Brackman's ENCYCLOPEDIA (#1617) and Jinny Beyer's QUILTER'S ALBUM (p. 154-3), all the illustrations use lighter colors as the pieces rise to the center, where some special fabric may be used (Jinny Beyer seems to have added a print depicting an old fashioned rose).
The shimmering vibrancy of the color combinations in this rendering were inspired by Georgia O'Keeffe's beautiful OAK LEAVES IN PINK AND GREY (that is, the autumn oak leaf color is here a combination of pink and grey, actually forming a brown). As often in her work, O'Keeffe depicts simple details of her subject, from which the viewer can extrapolate the whole, similar to figuring out the tiling of a quilt design or the repeat of an antique fabric from one patch. The idea of inference is a mystic property, celebrated profoundly in short form poetry, like Japanese haiku and tanka. It enables something to exist that doesn't exist explicitly. "Something from nothing," or so it is described in Taoism. Emily Dickinson says, "Eclipses suns imply."
For more quilt design color schemes at this site, adapted from paintings by modernist women artists see:
FLOWERING NINE PATCH (O'Keeffe)
ALBUM QUILT (Stölzl)
PATCHWORK PINES (O'Keeffe)
CITY STREETS (O'Keeffe)
SUNSHINE AND STAINED GLASS (Delaunay)
STAR LANE (Delaunay)
ON THE SQUARE (Delaunay)
GREEN RIVER (O'Keeffe)
TOWERS OF CAMELOT (Popova)
RISING SUN (Serebriakova)
GIRL'S JOY (with more women artists)
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ANTIQUE TILE BLOCK
