Introducing Bead Fern

Bead Fern is hand printed with water-based inks on acid-free, cotton paper and measures 7" x 10". The print is shown here with our Wild Ramps wallpaper in color Lilac & Green.

Our new, limited-edition linocut print, Bead Fern, was inspired by a fern of the same name. With a preference for shady groves and damp soil, bead fern is a native plant found throughout much of Eastern North America (including the boggy patches of my favorite Vermont meadow where I found the inspiration for this print). The fern derives its name from clusters of spore cases that cling to its fronds and resemble small beads. Known to wither at the first touch of frost, bead fern is also known as sensitive fern.

A bead fern in Vermont

The bead fern that inspired Bead Fern caught my eye in late August. With fall on the horizon, the fern’s deep green color was gaining a warm yellow cast. Its shifting hues reminded me of a favorite poem, Robert Frost’s "Nothing Gold Can Stay."

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost, 1923

The poem used to make me melancholy because I thought it was about loss. However, as I’ve gotten older, I've come to find different meaning in "Nothing Gold Can Stay." I believe the poem is about the relationship between ephemerality and beauty. We appreciate more that which is impermanent. In that spirit, we're often moved by art that evokes a fleeting experience. Perhaps this is why I love printmaking; it's an art form that captures literal impressions of moments in time.

After making a charcoal drawing of a bead fern, I transferred the sketch onto a block, carved the block, and printed it with green and gold ink.

With Bead Fern, my goal was to convey a specific moment when the fern was moving from green to gold. To do so, I used green and gold printing ink.

Bead Fern at an angle.

The prints are handmade, and the combination of green and gold ink rolls out differently with each printing pass so that every print is slightly different than the last. Thanks to the gold ink, the prints shimmer when you turn them in the sun.

Bead fern’s fossil records date back over fifty-five million years, and the fern has wide appeal- deer find shelter in its thickets, wild turkeys dine on its stalks, and people have long explored its medicinal uses, from pain relief to menstrual regulation- but I’m most drawn to the bead fern’s timeless beauty. This special plant, interpreted as a linocut print, with the right inks at hand, shows that something gold can stay.

Bead Fern

Order your Bead Fern print today.

Written by Alexis Audette