Vignette

Vignette looks back to Victorian portraiture and the elaborate frames that surrounded small black-and-white photographs. Oval and circular openings waited for a portrait, while decoration gathered around the empty space.

The frame often carried almost as much ceremony as the photograph. Card mounts, embossed borders and decorative surrounds turned modest portraits into objects intended for display and safekeeping. Even without the sitter, those empty apertures retain a curious sense of expectation.

That idea of framing an absence became the starting point for Vignette. The blank spaces suggest somewhere an image might once have belonged, while the surrounding decoration gives them their presence.

There is another, much later reference here too. The clustered geometry has echoes of 1970s crochet, particularly the colourful repeating forms assembled from small loops and stitches. Victorian formality meets something warmer and more homespun.

They are unlikely companions, separated by almost a century. Yet both use decoration to gather attention around a centre. Vignette brings those two memories together without belonging entirely to either.

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