dandelion seeds

William Henry Fox Talbot: Dandelion Seeds. Photogravure, 1858 or later. From the Met:

This experimental proof is a fine example of the capacity of Talbot's "photoglyphic engraving" to produce photographic results that could be printed on a press, using printer's ink—a more permanent process than photographs made with light and chemicals. Like Talbot's earliest photographic examples, the image here was photographically transferred to the copper engraving plate by laying the seeds directly on the photosensitized plate and exposing it to light, without the aid of a camera.

Tangentially related: Giovanni Corvaja's brooch of gold and platinum wire reminds me of dandelion seeds.

this weekend

Last night as I was walking home, I happened to look up and notice the way the streetlights illuminated the new young leaves on the sidewalk trees — a beautiful thing I had never seen before. Something about the way the light caught the leaves, each small and distinct, made them look like fragments of paper, suspended and ordered in fantastic patterns. They reminded me of a scattering of coins, or maybe some piece of art made from the wings of white moths, and made me wish I was better with a camera or had some true poetic vocation. I can't capture really how surprisingly lovely it was.

Anyway, looking ahead instead of up:

• cauliflower pizzas
• Zach Harris' 'lapidary painted wooden reliefs of imaginary landscapes'
• Hem
• six hours of sorrow
• reading diaries

Happy weekend.

Feldspar acorn earrings, ca. 1880s-1890s, from Erie Basin. (I like them because they look like the kind of nut I imagine might grow on a moonlit tree.)

sea-urchin burr

From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world ...

Pablo Neruda, from 'Ode To a Chestnut on the Ground'

spikes

Chestnut bowls by karoart.

horse chestnuts

Porcelain horse chestnuts by Penkridge Ceramics at Sweet Bella.