Three wooden things organise every frame at this desk: a board, a book, and a framed tree of bare branches.
A set that explains itself. The board is where new growth starts. The book is where a whole life is kept. The chart on the wall — abstract branching lines, no names, no dates — is where lives connect. A visitor who understands those three objects understands the studio before reading a word, which is what a set is for.
The chart stays abstract on purpose. Our sitters are fictional; a genealogy with names would invent ancestors in ink and call it documentation. Bare branches claim only the shape of descent, and shapes cannot forge anything.
Composing the three. Book nearest the sitter, board and pot to the other side, chart high and soft behind. The eye travels hand, book, pot, branches — a small journey from the person to her posterity. Keep that order and even a tight crop keeps the story.
If the chart slips out of frame in a close crop, no harm: the book and the cutting still carry the desk’s signature on their own.