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April's
Musings
Thursday, January 05, 2006
"A visit to the Taj Mahal"
Design Inspired. I often get questions about design inspiration.
Where does it come from? How do you get there?
Recently I got there in a big way. A visit to the Taj Mahal,
one of the Worlds Seven Wonders, was a designer's treat.
The Taj Mahal is all about symmetry and geometry. It uses the
dome, the arch, and their curving grace to make shapes and lines
that soothe and stimulate and inspire. The white marble, radiating
like warm silver is tiled and built and patterned with marble
blocks—patterns of stones and minerals and precious color—to
create a fantastic play of design.
Like water, the Taj Mahal is difficult to see—its whiteness
blinds one to its details. You know it is solid—it is made
of marble—but the confusing vision of white on white is
difficult to process. I see but can I explain? This whiteness,
this glow of pearly whites, changes with the sun's height, from
grey to blue shadows, mauve niches and rose white domes. All
of the Taj Mahal's structure moves through a color wheel that
is turned by the sun.
That is the Magic of the Taj Mahal—the architectural symmetry
softened by the kiss of nature.
I don't paint white—though my mother in law, the artist
Mary Cornell loved to—so I will not use the white glow
of the Taj in my designing. But I will hold its glow in my artistic
memory file, for my inspiration and for my designing. I will
take the geometry of the Taj Mahal—her arches, pillars,
and domes, and create patterns for colorful quilts—patterns
that will combine my love of the Mogul architecture with vibrant
colors of Quebec in the springtime. Garden hyacinths with snow
still clinging to them, vibrant tulips defying a chill spring
breeze, the first forsythia in brilliant yellow, the first lunging
of green shoots and sharp leaves on a grey landscape—how
beautiful these colors will be layered into the architecture
of the Taj Mahal, in soft cotton. Can you see it yet?
That's how I get design ideas. Now you know. Go get some too!
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