Lux et Decus: Blood Orange

An inscription in St. Tulicarpa’s Book of Hours, our motto is “Lux et Decus Hispaniae” which translates to the Light and Ornament of Spain. The phrase first appears in the twelfth century Codex Calixtinus, a guidebook for pilgrims traveling El Camino de Santiago.

Lux et Decus

An inscription in St. Tulicarpa’s Book of Hours, our motto is “Lux et Decus Hispaniae” which translates to the Light and Ornament of Spain. The phrase first appears in the twelfth century Codex Calixtinus, a guidebook for pilgrims traveling El Camino de Santiago.

Queen Anne’s Lace

Queen Anne’s Lace is an homage in silver and gold to the lacy flower’s delicate evolution from seed pod to full bloom, an original watercolor by artist Mariana Langley.

Gothic Hound Stripe

Inspired by the faithful mascots of a medieval reliquary.

Eden Stripe

Artist Mariana Langley created a bold overlay border of birds and flowers inspired by Gothic paintings of the Garden of Eden combined with the stripes from our Tomar pattern (in honor of the painted columns in the fifteenth century Convento de Cristo in Tomar, Portugal) in an original watercolor design.

Low Country Toile: Savannah

Treasures of a tidal Arcadia in a heron’s sweep of Southern heirlooms: magnolia blossoms, cicadas, marsh medallions, Spanish moss and lizards. The flora and fauna of the Low Country in the palette of spring, an original watercolor by artist Mariana Langley.

Low Country Toile: Moonriver

A high tide of indigo blooms and marsh medallions and the flora and fauna of the Low Country in a silvery moonlit palette. An original watercolor by artist Mariana Langley.

Berber Stripe

Inspired by the tea-stained memories of striped Berber shawls and djellabas in the souks on a long ago trip to Morocco.

St. Stephen

Inspired by the lavish tunic worn by St. Stephen depicted in a series of paintings in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain, by Spanish painter Juan de Juanes (1503-1579).

St. Catherine

Inspired by the painting Santa Catalina (St. Catherine) by Miguel Ximénez circa 1480 in the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

Arabesque

Inspired by the painting Santa Catalina (St. Catherine) by Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina (circa 1489-1536) in the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. The details on the sleeves and skirt are in pseudo-Kufic, an ornamented script meant to imitate the flourishes of Arabic calligraphy which the Spanish Renaissance painters could not decipher but copied with artistic license.

Arabesque Primavera

Inspired by the painting Santa Catalina (St. Catherine) by Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina (circa 1489-1536) in the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain. The details on the sleeves and skirt are in pseudo-Kufic, an ornamented script meant to imitate the flourishes of Arabic calligraphy which the Spanish Renaissance painters could not decipher but copied with artistic license.

Rose Gold Trellis

Inspired by the painting La Crucifixión by Juan Sánchez, circa 1460, from the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

The Guardians

Six hundred years ago Valencian painter Antoni Peris (1365-1422) was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the knights of Montesa, an offshoot of the Templars in the Old Kingdom of Aragon. Nuestra Señora de Gracia con los Grandes Maestres de la Orden de Montesa is now in the collection of the Prado and we have recreated the Gothic motifs of her gown and christened the pattern “ The Guardians” in honor of the divine dog and blessed bird.

Toreador

Inspired by the embroidered designs of el traje de luces, the traditional “suit of lights” worn by the toreador in the ring, and by Goya’s etchings of the rituals of the bullfight La Tauromaquia published in 1816 which are in the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain.

Barcelona

Inspired by a seventeenth century tile mural in El Barrio Gotíco of Barcelona, Spain.

Burgos

Inspired by the bold, architectural designs in the fourteenth century cloister of El Catedral de Santa Maria de Burgos, Spain’s first Gothic cathedral.

Salamanca

Inspired by the Baroque pattern of painted pomegranates in the altar niche of the Virgen de Santa Maria la Blanca in the Salamanca Cathedral in Spain.

Avila

In Castilla la Vieja the ghosts of pilgrims and warriors can be found within the walls of Ávila, an ancient fortress city guarding a twelfth century cathedral. The columns within are covered in painted patterns of blue and gold, the palette of Gothic prayers.

Tomar

Inspired by the Manueline (Portuguese Gothic style) details of the painted columns in the Round Church within the walls of the Convento de Cristo, a fifteenth century convent built on the ruins of a Templar fort in Tomar, Portugal.

Santa Elena

Inspired by arrowheads and snakeskins of the Low Country and the plated armor of sixteenth century Spain. In 1529 Spain’s maps of the New World included an official reference to Santa Elena, a settlement named in honor of the intrepid mother of Constantine the Great and which modern GPS marks as Port Royal Sound in South Carolina. Santa Elena was formally established in 1566 by the explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilés a year after he founded Saint Augustine in Florida.

Celestial

Inspired by the detail of the celestial globe which appears on a shelf in the background of Hans Holbein the Younger’s monumental 1533 painting The Ambassadors in London’s National Gallery, the actual wooden model used as a prop was created a decade before by the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Schöner (1477-1547).

Armada

Inspired by the splendid reticella lace collar worn by Queen Elizabeth I in the iconic 1588 Armada portrait. The open thread rosettes originally created in cutwork linen have been exquisitely recreated by artist Simoni Trapsioni in an original oil painting.

Cartouche

Cartography in the sixteenth century was an art born from the marriage of conquest and commerce as thousands of ships sailed from Sevilla and Cádiz to the New World.

Captain and crew spun an astrolabe to catch the stars’ bearing as the waves broke over the bow in an attempt to accurately record their position for the benefit of future expeditions.

With a cross and a compass they traced the borders of Empire in their ships’ logs, following a royal command to produce maps for La Casa de la Contratación in Sevilla, headquarters of trade and exploration for what would become known as Las Americas. Established by Columbus’ patron Queen Isabella in 1503, the House of Trade’s most valuable asset and the country’s biggest state secret was El Padrón Real, a continuously annotated master chart of the newly discovered paths that crisscrossed the infinite blue to El Nuevo Mundo in a great maritime web.

By candlelight the mapmakers scaled spindrift into latitude and translated the treason of tides into gold leaf.

This was the age of cherubs with cheeks full of wind that blew painted ships across a vellum sea…

To celebrate the Art of Mapmaking, I commissioned Mariana to create a pattern inspired by a Portolan chart threaded with rhumb lines and starred with a compass rose.

Honeycomb Heart

Dripping honeycomb hearts and exquisitely rendered bees from a detail of the diptych painting The Blue Aura by artist Simoni Trapsioni.

Lovers Eyes

Inspired by the flaming orange dress covered with eyes and ears worn by Queen Elizabeth I in The Rainbow Portrait (circa 1600) and the pearl framed, Georgian-era Lover’s Eye brooches. An original oil painting by artist Simoni Trapsioni.

The Virtuous Hand

The Virtuous Hand holding the faith, love and hope symbols of the heart, cross and anchor, from an original oil painting by artist Simoni Trapsioni.

Calypso

Inspired by the nymph goddess Calypso’s elaborate cloth woven for Odysseus’ sail when she finally agreed to set him free from her island. An original painting by artist Simoni Trapsioni of pomegranates, phoenix, and pearls in a palette of Icarus blue, Persephone pink, and Medusa green.

Persephone

In honor of Persephone, Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld, artist Mariana Langley created a melancholy tangle of green and gold in an original watercolor painting.