ROSE TREE BOX
ACRYLICS ON RED CEDAR W/ COPPER EDGES, HEMLOCK TOP & POPLAR HANDLE
(SUMMER 2012)

     The starting point of my development as a student of art began with my great interest in Northwest Coast Indian bentwood boxes.    Box and chest surfaces of western red cedar provided the “canvas” for the amazing two-dimensional designs devised by Native artists.  The end product of their efforts was a material object beautiful, functional, symbolic, and spiritual.  This aspect of my education still forms the structural foundation of my art.  The combination of beauty and functionality also is an important tenet of the Arts & Crafts Movement.  Both of these sources continually act as inspiration for my art. My Rose Tree Box is another attempt to blend these overlapping influences into an integrated whole.  The box itself is made of red cedar but, due to the limitations of the wood used, the sides are not kerfed and bent in the traditional method.   Instead, they are pegged on all four sides.  The four corners have been trimmed in hand-beaten copper strips; a reference both to Arts & Crafts metalwork and to Japanese tansu ornamentation.  The handle on the top is made of poplar.   The major designs on the front and back of the box show the rose tree motif, commonly used by Arts & Crafts designers, especially those who formed the Glasgow style.  According to Laura Euler in The Glasgow Style, “the rose tree was another popular Glasgow design.  It combined the Glasgow rose with an entrelac root system…” (Euler, The Glasgow Style, ©2008, page 15).  Inspiration for my rose trees came from an embroidered and painted panel from a firescreen and inlay from a mahogany bureau-bookcase illustrated in Euler’s book (pages 15 and 16).  Other inspiration came from George Walton’s “Eros” overmantel panel (see Elizabeth Cumming, Hand, Heart and Soul: The Arts & Crafts Movement in Scotland, ©2006, page 121) and M.H. Baillie-Scott’s staircase screen at Blackwell, carved by master-carver Arthur Simpson (see Ian Macdonald-Smith, The Houses and Gardens of M.H. Baillie-Scott, ©2010, page 53).  The roses depicted are my interpretation of the Glasgow rose, probably first designed by Glasgow School of Art embroidery professor (and wife of the school’s principal Fra Newberry) Jessie Newberry, and later made famous by C.R. Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.  The “lattice” on the side design was inspired by my favorite bentwood box, a Haida box from the village of Masset currently residing in Victoria’s Royal British Columbia Museum, to which I have made regular pilgrimages (see Bill Holm, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form, ©1965, page 77).    The sides are also reminiscent of William Morris’s signature wallpaper design entitled “Trellis” (see Michael Robinson, International Arts & Crafts, ©2005, pages 28-29).  I have chosen to paint my roses red, white, and black in homage to the 2010 song “Blood, Ice, and Ashes” by the Burns Unit and sung by Karine Polwart.

KARINE POLWART     "BLOOD, ICE, & ASHES"  THE BURNS UNIT--SIDE SHOW  2010

DIMENSIONS:   LENGTH:  20 inches                  TOP:   LENGTH:  23 inches
                             WIDTH:      7.5 inches                            WIDTH:      9.25 inches
                             HEIGHT:    9 inches                               THICKNESS:  .75 inches
                                with handle 14 inches

                                                            PRICE $450