Our Tiger Saskia Just Died | Rest In Peace

RIP Saskia the Cat (2018)

Above Our cat Saskia just died. It's a quiet Sunday morning here, and she died peacefully at home about an hour ago. She lived with us (tolerated us really) for eighteen years, which is a pretty long time for a creature who began life as a forlorn feral farm kitten.

She never allowed us to tame her, although she surely loved her mom. She loved to be held and squeezed by her mom—whom she also liked to bite, without warning. She craved belly rubs as intensely as she despised having her nails clipped. An episode of nail clipping, the mere mention of the word "clippers," or leaving her home alone for a day, were unpardonable causes for not speaking to (or even looking at) her mom for hours afterwards. Her father didn't exist (unless she was hungry for tuna).

Saskia was a perfectly beautiful tiger, a walking haute couture "poster child" for the stipey optical elegance of animal camouflage. She was named after Saskia van Uylenburgh, the model and eventual wife of Rembrandt. Our Saskia spent a lot of time in Mom's studio.

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William Blake—

Tyger, tyger, burning bright / In the forests of the night / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame they fearful symmetry?

Dazzle-Painted Lilies of the Field—and Pajamas

A view of camouflaged ships in dock by R. Guy Kortright (1919)

Above A painting of dazzle-painted British ships, by (Reginald) Guy Kortright (1877-1934), a Canadian-born British painter who served as a navy lieutenant in World War I. With John Everett and (Lawrence) Campbell Taylor, he was assigned not to design ship camouflage schemes, but to record his observations of such ships, through various onsite paintings. As evidenced by the one above, the results were inevitably striking.

Other sources of full-color reproductions are cited in an earlier post. The image shown here was published (along with two others by L. Campbell Taylor) in a page of full-color images in The Sphere on March 22, 1919, p. 259, with a heading on the page that reads WHEN THE DOCKS PUT ON RAIMENT AS THE LILIES OF THE FIELD. On the page before is an unsigned half-page article on DAZZLE-PAINTING AND ITS PURPOSE.

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Unsigned, "Other People's Troubles: A Paris Letter" in The Sketch (October 13, 1920, p. 412)—

Paris is dazzle-mad. I think that every woman who has the courage to wear these dazzle furs that I see deserves the Legion of Honor. They are striped with great slashing streaks of white on black. Hats are dazzle hats. Dresses are dazzle dresses. Pajamas are dazzle pajamas. Everywhere are to be seen these angular lighting effects. The decorations most in favor in the very private and particular room are dazzle decorations. I seem to be existing in a weird Futurist dream.

Below A cartoon also from The Sketch (May 21, 1919, p. 226), attributed to the Daily Paper, for which the accompanying caption reads—

A Futurist friend of mine is designing his own coffin. He means it to be some funeral.

Anon, A Futurist Coffin (1919)