Marian Bantjes

MARIAN BANTJES

            
www.bantjes.com

    The designer I chose is Marian Bantjes. She is currently still alive. She first started her career as a book typesetter in 1984. Ten years later, she opened her own design firm. Now she stays with Canada but she works with magazines and people from all over the world.

One of her major influences would be the 14th–18th century calligraphy. It was also the start of her career as a designer. She was also greatly inspired by the Art and Crafts movement. One aspect of the movement was connecting with nature. In certain work, she tends to use actual living flowers and petals to create words and other designs. One example would be Sorrow. It was made up of many flowers and plants in which she organized to spell the world sorrow. Another example would be her design, I Want it All. She created the letters out of peonies. Old lace also inspired her to create other handcraft objects like the lace clock called the Aiga/DC Clock. Although her handcrafts were more for visual than function, it still works. Bantjes also created other high quality crafts such as the snowflake pendants that were sold for thousands of dollars.

The Aiga/DC Clock may have been the inspiration to the 2013 Old Lace Inspired Home Decorating Concepts shown on decoradvisor.com. A series of furnitures, including an old lace clock was designed. However, unlike Bantjes’ design where the hands where laces, the 2013 old lace inspired clock used lace for the shell of the clock. Yganko is an artist that designed the red rose petal typography (http://www.shutterstock.com/portfolio/search.mhtml?submitter=788 122&searchterm=rose%20forming%20petals%20texture). He may had been inspired by Bantjes’ I Want it All, peony letter design which was also made of flowers.