Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition by Pública Rework: The Colour Runs Through It

Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition is an art print of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull drawn entirely in William Morris's Larkspur pattern, printed on a full ground of flat colour rather than on white paper.

The eye socket is the same green as the field behind the animal. So is every gap between the leaves. Nothing on this sheet has been left blank, and that quietly changes what a skull can be.

Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition by Pública Rework is a fine art print pairing William Morris's Larkspur pattern of 1874 with Alan Pedersen's T-rex drawing from 2012. The skull is rendered as dense leaf and flower pattern. It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, in two sizes and two colourways, Green/Pink and Rosa/Grey.

Nothing on the sheet is left blank

In the Colour Edition every part of the sheet carries colour, including the parts of the skull that are missing.

Read the green anywhere on this print and you get the same answer. Behind the skull, in the gaps between the leaves, and inside the eye socket, it is one flat colour, unchanged. The openings in the skull are not holes in the picture. They are the ground, showing through.

Those openings are the honest part of a skull. The eye socket, the large window in front of it and the small oval of the nostril are the places where a real head carried no bone. Printed on white paper they read as absence. Printed on green they read as the wall.

The same is true of the lower half of the sheet, which holds nothing but the caption. Empty paper looks unfinished. A field of flat colour looks quiet. It is the same composition in both editions, and only one of them gives the animal room rather than leaving it stranded.

Larkspur was a wallpaper first

The pattern filling the skull was designed to cover a wall, and the Colour Edition is the version of this print that treats it that way.

William Morris drew Larkspur as a wallpaper, a monochrome version in 1872 and a polychrome one two years later, block printed from wood. A wallpaper is not a picture. It is a surface, and it arrives with its ground colour already chosen, because nobody papers a wall in order to leave it blank.

This edition gives the drawing exactly that. A flat ground, and a border of the same foliage printed the full way round the edge of the sheet. Hung on a wall, the border reads as an inner frame and the colour behind it reads as something that was hung there first.

The specimen label comes forward with it. Under the skull sits a plain caption reading Tyrannosaurus Rex, and below that, smaller, Carnivore and Cretaceous period, with the circular Morris Pedersen mark set to the right of it. In the Light Edition both are printed in a pale grey you can miss from two steps back. Here they sit dark against the ground and are simply legible, so the museum label belongs to the decoration instead of hiding behind it.

If you would rather have the same drawing with the paper left white, Patterns of Ancient Life, Light Edition keeps the skull on a plate rather than on a wall.

Green/Pink or Rosa/Grey: which colour becomes the wall

The two colourways hold the same drawing, and the name tells you which of the two colours will be the ground.

Green/Pink is a mid green ground with the foliage in pale pink, so the skull is the lighter thing on the sheet and settles softly into a room. Rosa/Grey is a blush pink ground with the foliage in charcoal, so the skull is the darker thing and every leaf stays separate and legible from across the room. In both names the ground is given first and the pattern second.

There is a longer precedent for this than a shop menu. Morris issued Larkspur in more than one colouring himself, one printing yellow over white, others in light blue, grey or brick red, and later variations giving it blue and pink blossoms with leaves in two tones of green. Choosing a ground is what this pattern has asked of the person hanging it since the 1870s.

The split goes deeper than a product page. Larkspur began as a single colour on white before it was reissued in full colour, which is close to the distance between the Light and Colour editions of this print. Patterns of Ancient Life also exists as a Dark Edition, with its own pair of colours.

Both colourways are offered in 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm, on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g.

A skull is usually a picture of something gone. This one is printed so that the gone parts are the same colour as everything else, which makes them very hard to read as loss.

That is what this edition changes. The Light Edition puts the animal on paper. The Colour Edition puts it on a wall, and colours the wall in first.

About Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition

What paper is Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition printed on?
It is printed on Fine Art Freja paper at 265 g, the heavier art paper NOKUKO uses for its art prints, chosen for colour reproduction and for the way it holds fine pattern detail. Because the ground is a full field of flat colour, the weight of the paper is doing visible work here. The frame shown in the product images is for illustration and is not included.

What sizes does Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition come in?
Two sizes, 30x40 cm and 50x70 cm. Both colourways are offered in both sizes, and the composition is identical in each, with the skull set in the upper half and the specimen caption at the foot.

What is the difference between the Green/Pink and Rosa/Grey colourways?
They carry the same drawing on different grounds. Green/Pink is pale pink foliage on a mid green ground. Rosa/Grey is charcoal foliage on a blush pink ground. The ground colour also fills the eye socket and every gap between the leaves, so changing colourway changes the whole sheet at once rather than one part of it.

Is Patterns of Ancient Life, Colour Edition a limited edition, and does it come with a certificate?
No to both. It is an open edition art print and is not one of the eight limited editions NOKUKO holds in a separate collection, and no certificate of authenticity is issued, because certificates accompany original paintings rather than prints. It is made for NOKUKO by Pública Rework and comes with free worldwide shipping on orders over €120.

Written by NOKUKO.