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Ottoman painters believed everyday life deserved gold and colour. In the festival books Surname-i Hümayun (1582) bakers, boatmen and musicians fill the streets of Istanbul as if every day was a celebration. I built a Recraft Style from public-domain scans of these books and painted Turkish life in 2026 the same way: modern simit seller, coffee fortunes app, the, finally, flyinh carpets. The tools change, but the tea, culture, hospitality of people, the street cats and the warmth of our streets stay the same.
The archive used for the job, or the "before"
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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.
Social post: https://lnkd.in/p/gXJn_FQQ
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.
Usbong is Tagalog for "bud," the moment a flower first breaks open.
I dug into Flora de Filipinas (1877–1883), a 19th-century botanical atlas of Philippine plants, through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Wikimedia Commons. I turned its hand-colored plates into a fictional women's football club.
Every native flower became gear:
Dapdap → home kit
Banaba → away kit
Caballero → boots
Santan + gumamela → goalkeeper gloves
Sanggumay → match ball
Makahiya → the supporter's scarf
Makahiya is the "shy" plant, the one that folds when you touch it. It's also covered in thorns, and that's the whole idea: these flowers aren't soft or decorative. They bite. Worn by striker Maya Flores, #29, the collection reclaims flowers as fierce, not fragile.
Bella, this is sooo cool!!!