{"product_id":"rings-around-the-last-letter","title":"Rings Around the Last Letter","description":"\u003cp\u003eA wheel is built from circles, and here only the circles survive. The rim's edge returns as a broken ring of light, a tyre's shoulder catches along one curved seam, and at the very centre two letters sit inside a smaller ring of their own, the last stop before the hub disappears into black. Rings Around the Last Letter reduces a Rolls-Royce wheel to exactly that, rings within rings, closing in on the one that holds a name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAround that centre, the spokes do not survive as spokes. They return as fragments, a scatter of bright marks and small diamonds of light that imply rotation more than they describe it, as if the wheel had been caught mid turn and only the brightest instants of its motion had stayed behind. Between them, the black does most of the work, holding the fragments apart so the eye has to complete the wheel that the image only gestures toward.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo paint. No print. No ink. The entire image is scratched into the surface of the acrylic glass, a field of individual marks that sit as light on deep black. The image is always present, it does not wait for a lamp to find it. Light does not create the image, it sharpens it, under direct light the scratches catch and reflect, the contrast deepens, and the rings and the lettering lift further out of the void around them. It reads differently from different angles, without ever losing the image.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the centre, two interlocked letters, R and R, for Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, a signature pressed onto the wheel long after it had already become a signature for something larger than the two men who first wrote it. The badge is said to have changed from red to black in 1933, the year Henry Royce died, a small act of mourning worn ever since on every car that carries the mark. This is an independent artwork by Tijs Dragtsma, not made, licensed or endorsed by Rolls-Royce.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRings Around the Last Letter belongs to Objects of Desire, a series within Art with Scratch by Tijs Dragtsma in which imagery is constructed through controlled surface damage rather than pigment or print, and in which that same damage becomes a way of asking why a mark meant to say who built the thing becomes, a century later, a mark of who owns it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA wheel turns and is rarely looked at closely, yet the house still placed its full name there, twice interlocked, as if even the part that meets the road had to announce who it belonged to. Which sign would you still want, if the only place left to put it was somewhere nobody would ever think to look.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A visual language where damage is not destruction, but structure.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMore about the artist, process and materials can be found on the About page.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eQuestions about this work, availability or shipping can be sent through the contact page.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TD Fine Art Studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59672805802309,"sku":null,"price":4500.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0904\/0724\/0005\/files\/Rings_Around_the_Last_Letter_thumbnail.jpg?v=1791705396","url":"https:\/\/tdfineartstudio.com\/products\/rings-around-the-last-letter","provider":"TD Fine Art Studio","version":"1.0","type":"link"}