Strawberry Season
Our print, Strawberry King, shown with our wallpaper, Virginia Strawberry in color Leaf Green.
Wild strawberries, Fragaria Virginiana, are native plants that grow along the East Coast and throughout much of the Midwest, and they’re some of the earth’s most delectable gifts to living creatures. In the case of the blue jay, there’s reciprocation. Drawn to the fruit’s honeyed taste, as well as its antioxidants and high moisture content, blue jays consume wild strawberries and spread their seeds to new locations. Our print, Strawberry King, pays homage to blue jays for their role in dispersing strawberry seeds. Indeed, with their regal blue crest, noisy calls, and reputation as the “rulers of the backyard,” blue jays are both majestic and magnanimous.
From L to R: a king of hearts playing card, an early sketch, and the charcoal sketch used for transferring the image onto printing blocks.
Strawberry King’s composition is inspired by the king of hearts playing card. In our interpretation, the king is the blue jay, the heart is the strawberry, and the card’s mirrored orientation suggests the symbiotic relationship between bird and fruit.
Top: Strawberry King. Bottom: each layer of color that goes into making the print.
Three blocks are required to print Strawberry King. Block one is red, block two is two shades of blue, and block three is sepia. Like all of our limited edition prints, Strawberry King is made with water-based inks and Japanese mulberry paper, and is printed by hand.
L: Virginia Strawberry Wallpaper, color Leaf Green. R: Virginia Strawberry Wallpaper, color Ochre.
Our Strawberry King print and our Virginia Strawberry wallpaper, are inspired by my childhood memories of picking platterfuls of wild strawberries in Vermont. June is strawberry season and I can’t wait to get back to the Green Mountains to experience the thrill of finding little scarlet gems growing under serrated leaves, the perfume of sweet berries on the breeze, and the burst of their sweetness on my tongue.
Happy strawberry season!