While Laura and Emily were off exploring Old World Hungary, the rest of the design team went on our own inspiration trip to our local library. It was a really fun and inspiring trip. It was a great way for us to start making our own discoveries about the cultures of Old World Hungary. I hope it becomes a Tea tradition – so that each season we can start our inspiration process at the library.
I decided to research fine art of the region and discovered Nicolae Tonitza. I loved the painterly floral and leaf patterned backgrounds. The graphic dark circular eyes and dark line work is such an interesting contrast to the textural detail of the rest of the paintings. He had an impressive ability to communicate emotion through his paintings. There is such a sweet innocence in his paintings of children, while his paintings of older women are much more somber.
