Big Leaf
african mahogany, green rayon flocking
20 x48 x 20 in.
The acanthus leaf is among the most ubiquitous ornamental forms in Western decorative arts. Scrollwork, filigree, vegetal forms, and more are often derived from this source. Once I decided to focus on ornamentation as a broad topic, it was as if I stepped into a new built environment. All around me was ornamentation. The architecture of Providence is absolutely saturated. It is a treasure trove of carved stone and wood and iron scrollwork. If you begin to look, you start to find acanthus leaves specifically—everywhere, in a thousand different forms and styles. I began taking photographs of examples every time I walked outside or went into a home. They’re on the architecture (corbels, capitals, wall panels), interior carpentry (trim, banisters, fixtures), furniture (carved relief, sconces, chandeliers), and so on. Eventually I searched for images of the source plant. Acanthus, also known as Bear’s Breeches, has distinctive leaves to be sure—large and with regular lobes—but not enough to explain their singular ubiquity. A weed indigenous to and still prolific in Greece, acanthus inspired vegetal decoration thousands of years ago. And that vegetal decoration inspired vegetal decoration, and so on. Millenia later, here in Providence, the ornamentation resembles ornamentation far more than it resembles the leaves of the Bear’s Breeches plant. Acanthus has become a caricature of itself.
The acanthus leaf, then, is a generative starting point for an exploration of decoration through design. Prior to the 20th century, ornamentation was abundant because it made objects more pleasing. The logics of industry and modernism changed the priorities of design to favor overall form above Big Leaf • 21
decorated surface. Big Leaf asks, “What if we input the acanthus leaf into the modernist calculus of form?” This object takes an acanthus form found in relief carvings decorating wood furniture and interior trim, mirrors the relief into a full-round stand-alone object, and blows it up to the scale of furniture. The decorative illustration becomes the form of the furniture itself.
Big Leaf is made of mahogany because traditional ornamental carved acanthuses are so often made of mahogany. Once made, this neo-post-modern-esque sculptural object existed in that lineage of acanthus abstraction—but not quite enough. It was time to abstract the acanthus ornament form back towards its natural origin. Acanthus leaves are green. Leaves are soft. And so the leaf is flocked with green rayon fibers. Exposed mahogany, styled from acanthus illustrations and engravings, is left in the linework, becoming the veins of the leaf.