A seed is a chance; a cutting is a promise. This studio chose the promise, and the board on the desk is where it is kept.
Character, carried exactly. Gardeners take cuttings because the new plant is the old plant — same habit, same flower, no surprises from cross-pollination. Our character card works the same way: a written woman, pasted word for word into every brief, so the twentieth portrait is the same person as the first. The potted cutting on the desk is that discipline, made visible.
The board matters too. Propagation happens on a plain board, in good light, with a clean knife and no ceremony — the least theatrical corner of the garden. Portraits here borrow that plainness: one book, one board, one pot, one woman.
Briefing the pot. Small terracotta pot, one green stem, a few plain leaves. No flowers, no fruit, no label stuck in the soil — labels are print, and print is culled. If a generation dresses the cutting as a bouquet, the frame has left the desk’s idea and is discarded.
Keep the board bare apart from the pot. A board crowded with tools reads as a kitchen; a board with one pot reads as a beginning.