Bargeboard

Colenbrander dated this drawing to the day, 10 November 1909, a few days after his 68th birthday, and gave it a one-word title, Windveer. In Dutch the word names the board that runs along the edge of a gable, but taken apart it reads as wind feather, and the museum does not say which sense he meant. Titles like this run all through his designs. The Stedelijk keeps other sheets from the same months with names such as Warboel, a muddle, dated May 1909, and three more dated between 11 and 16 March 1910. As early as 1903 the critic Eduard Thorn Prikker warned against reading a mood into such names. A carpet called Tears, he wrote, was no sadder than one called Spring.