Roman Empire Necklace 2nd-3rd century AD gold, garnet, emerald Art Institute of Chicago |
French Workshop Dagger Handle ca. 1300-1320 ivory Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Martin Schongauer Shields with Rabbit and Moor's Head, held by Wild Man ca. 1480-90 engraving National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Giovanni della Robbia Frieze Fragment with Cherub Head ca. 1510 glazed terracotta Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
Giovanni Bernardi Adoration of the Magi ca. 1520 glass relief-panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Francesco Salviati Emblematic Design with Double-Headed Horse and Moth ca. 1550-60 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
Burgundian Workshop Cabinet 1580 walnut and oak Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Bernard Picart Ornament with Head in a Wreath ca. 1710 etching Philadelphia Museum of Art |
Johann Heinrich Koehler Dwarf as Gardener ca. 1720-25 ivory, silver, copper, diamonds Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
John Michael Rysbrack Putti supporting Architrave ca. 1730 marble Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Augustus Pugin (designer) Wallpaper Fragment (Heraldic Lion-Heads and Monogram) ca. 1850 color woodblock print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Franz Heinrich Summer Room of Queen Olga at Stuttgart New Palace ca. 1870 watercolor Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
British Workshop Window Cornice 1931 carved and painted wood with silk brocade (commissioned replica of 18th-century cornice) Philadelphia Museum of Art |
Dana Bartlett Ornamental Design ca. 1934 watercolor and gouache National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Jim Blashfield The Doors 1967 lithograph (poster) Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Susan Phillips McMeekin Design for Dragon Clock ca. 2012 presentation drawing, with watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
from Scorpio, or, The Scorpion
This belt of fretted stars that so promiscuously plays
Upon our eyes, we learn to name them all,
Picking our favourites out like horses in a race.
But now their steady passages recall
How, geared to the years,
They tick our lives out: and we cease to see
Much hope in false futurity:
Picking our favourites out like horses in a race.
But now their steady passages recall
How, geared to the years,
They tick our lives out: and we cease to see
Much hope in false futurity:
Instead we falsify stars that have been
With promise that we alter since those stars,
Raising reality
Not in what we see,
Nor in what meteors there yet may be,
But in fixed stars we would we once had seen.
– Joseph Gordon Macleod, from The Ecliptic (1930)