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Pansy Hours began with one Valentine card from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Anonymous, 1875-80, Public Domain), where a tiny girl sleeps inside a giant pansy. I turned that single card into a custom Recraft Style and asked what a love letter from 1875 would look like if it were written for exhaustion instead of romance. The answer is a fictional sleep-and-calm brand: the same sleeping girl and the same velvet-purple blooms now live on a tea tin, tote bag, gift box, sticker sheet, notebook, playing cards and a phone case, objects the original printer could never have imagined. The collision is the point: a Victorian card that refuses to hurry, placed on everything we use to keep up. Every object is generic, with no real brands or logos, and a short animated reveal brings the collection to life.
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Momoyogusa SS27: A 1909 Pattern Book Art-Directs a 2027 Capsule
In 1909, Kyoto designer Kamisaka Sekka published Momoyogusa ("A World of Things"), three volumes of woodblock-printed patterns so flat and graphic they still look modern a century later.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on eight plates from the Cleveland Museum of Art's public-domain copy, keeping Sekka's flat colour fields, metallic accents and empty paper grounds.
Then I handed him a 2027 brief: a streetwear capsule. His winter river became a quilted puffer, his cranes climbed onto chunky trainers, his peonies bloomed on headphones, and his dancers came back in matching tracksuits.
A pattern book from 1909, working as a fashion house's design studio.
THE INTERNET, MECHANICALLY EXPLAINED
An Imaginary Catalogue, 1890
The Internet, Mechanically Explained imagines digital life as a lost catalogue of inventions from 1890. I built a custom Recraft Style from John Emslie’s public-domain, hand-coloured scientific engravings, published in 1850 and preserved by Wellcome Collection. Eight invented mechanisms turn notifications, endless scrolling, cloud storage, search, recommendations, read receipts and passwords into physical cause-and-effect diagrams. The sequence ends with an offline lever: one small movement that gives the viewer their afternoon back.
Archive originals: John Emslie (1813–1875), Motion and Machinery and Mechanical Powers, published by James Reynolds on 10 December 1850. Both source plates are marked Public Domain by Wellcome Collection.
The custom V4 Style and core illustrations were created in Recraft Studio during the challenge. Selected before-and-afters are attached; the full eight-image series and both archive originals are in the public project.
Kalighat 2026: The Machines Are the New Babus
Kalighat paintings were cheap bazaar watercolours sold in 1880s Calcutta, and they were satire: they mocked the city's new rich, dandies who aped their British masters and lounged while servants fanned them.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on five anonymous Kalighat sheets from the Cleveland Museum of Art and Wellcome Collection, keeping the bold single outline, flat colour and empty paper ground.
Then I turned the satire on 2026: the machines are the new babus. Phones smoke hookahs on velvet chairs, robot vacuums ride in palanquins, and humans fan, carry and groom their devices. Same masters, new hardware.
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