What’s a douwing? It’s a kind of fish, apparently, and there are a gazillion of them in Renard’s book. What kind of fish is it? I don’t know! It’s a Dutch name, I think? (Most of the names of the fish on the plates are in Dutch; I only admire the pretty pictures, and skipped the text.) In any case, I liked the idea of a pattern of fish of similar shapes and their many colors. It’s a smaller scaled pattern and I ended up thinking it might work for wallpaper in a bathroom maybe? But if you wanted it scaled up, I could do that, too.
Fish and other sealife taken from Louis Renard’s 1754 book of fish and sea life from the Indian Ocean, Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, de diverses couleurs et figures extraordinaires, que l’on trouve autour des isles Moluques et sur les côtes des terres Australes: peints d’après nature.
The images used in this pattern are taken from the copy at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, viewable at the Biodiversity Heritage Library: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.115425.
The background colors on the Spoonflower fabrics are coordinated across the entire collection, so if you wanted a pink background for the black fish and for the blue fish, for example, the pinks are the same.
Available as wallpaper, fabric, and household fabric things for purchase at Spoonflower (link is to the white background; poke around for the blue and yellow).
It’d be very busy wallpaper for a big wall, but for a small accent wall? I think maybe.
Or maybe you just want it as napkins.
