WILD AMERICANA
The new Autumn/Winter 2025 collection
wild americana
A personal introduction to the collection from Sabina
This collection was conceived as an informal sequel to an earlier work inspired by the travels and notebooks of a fictional 19th century explorer. In line with the narrative of my tale, I revisited and expanded my research on the notebooks and sketchbooks of explorers from the 19th century. These logs provide the first-known documentation of many species; never only receptacles for finished thought, they can be n act of storytelling, an anecdotal art of travel. However, it is important to note that while intending to ‘discover the strange and exotic’, these ‘intrepid’ explorers were, in most cases, the only real foreigners and strangers in each landscape.
I delved into the rich and broad-ranging history of American folk art, a category often patronisingly described as primitive or naive, yet one which is bursting with craft, skill, innovation, and originality. Animals and natural motifs appear universally throughout this category, with the artists drawing on familiar forms for reference.
The trailing peak of American folk art creation coincided with a boom in the formation of secret societies in the USA; a period now known as ‘The Fraternal Age’. The timing of this surge is thought to relate to the end of the Civil War; at a time when America felt largely adrift, these masonic societies provided a common glue, most founded on kinship, faith, resilience, hope and charity.
The trailing peak of American folk art creation coincided with a boom in the formation of secret societies in the USA; a period now known as ‘The Fraternal Age’. The timing of this surge is thought to relate to the end of the Civil War; at a time when America felt largely adrift, these masonic societies provided a common glue, most founded on kinship, faith, resilience, hope and charity.
And, naturally, the animals themselves inspired this collection, including
the magnificent dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Each of these works represents the formation of my own imaginary secret society; The American bison, a spiritually significant creature for many, whose number fell from 60 million to just 541 in under a century due to mass culling as part of the methodical subjugation of native
Americans. The bald eagle, who, despite being named the national bird of the United States in 1782, was on the brink of extirpation in the late 20th century. The grey wolf, who, at the hands of the human race, endured the most relentless and ruthless persecution one species has ever waged against another, and now occupies just a tenth of its original range in the United States. My collection recruits these creatures as powerful symbols, standing for faith in nature, hopeful resilience, and issuing a plea for kinship and charity in preserving our natural world.
‘To discover and to reveal – that is the way every artist sets about his business. All art is, I suppose, a way of exploring.’ –Robert J. Flaherty, 1884–1951.
‘All a man has to do is see; all about us nature puts on the most thrilling adventure stories ever created, but we have to use our eyes’–William Beebe, American naturalist and ornithologist, 1877–1962.
Thank you, as always, for following my work, and I hope you enjoy the new designs as much as I enjoyed bringing them to life.
Sabina
