Proverbs in Gold

The idea of this series came from the materials themselves - specifically the gold leaf. I had used gold leaf in a black and white etching before in Paris' Dilemma, and I liked the way the little touch of gold lit up the monochrome image, so I was looking for some other subject in which to incorporate a little gold.

And so, I poking around the internet, I looked for proverbs about gold. I suppose that one should not be surprised to find that the subject has yielded such a rich seam of proverbs, gold having been important for so many historical reasons. All the same, I was rather pleased at the number and quality of proverbs I found. Of course I then had to sort through them looking for those which not only appealed, but which would actually work with a picture.

I should say that the list of proverbs from which I picked these ones was a collection of proverbs from around the world, so you will probably not recognize them all. The ones I picked are, however, generally from Europe if not from England specifically, and several exist in a number of European languages. So, here was my list:
"Kill not the Goose that lays the Golden Egg"
"The Devil catches most Souls with a Golden Net"
"Better whole than patched in Gold"
"A Man of Straw needs a Woman of Gold"
"The Frog will jump back into the Pool, though it sits upon a Golden Stool"

Of course probably the best-known proverb about gold - "All that Glisters is not Gold" - is completely inappropriate here, since I am actually using gold, but I had intended to print these up in different arrangements of groups of 3, with the over-arching title of "All that Glisters is Gold". I then became aware of how difficult it would be to print, by hand, from three separate etching plates onto the same piece of paper and to get a satisfactory balance of tone across the whole group more than a couple of times before I wore out the plates in the attempt! So any groupings in the same frame will be be done with a nice neat window-mount with multiple apertures.

All images and prints are © Nancy Farmer. Please email me if you wish to reproduce any of these images, or see my permissions page in the 'info' section.

Prints & Originals:

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