"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

On the Fourth Day of Christmas, my True Love Gave to Me…

On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

What is this fixation with birds? And why are they calling? On this topic, I encourage you to watch this performance, if you haven’t already. Anyway, here we are.

1. Hester Durkan

We’ve already seen her doves and hens, but her birds are definitely calling

2. M Tuzon

Here he is. My favorite surreal artist of this season. He did the first 5 days and here’s his calling birds. At least they seem to be calling each other, instead of bothering you, which is a nice twist, but the first one seems very angry about something…

3. Iain Hamilton

You thought I wasn’t going to feature Ian Hamilton of Bewilderbeest? You were wrong. After his Very French Hens, here’s his Very Calling Birds. It’s not like all of them are calling: it’s more like a joint effort.

4. Muriel Clarke

White matt ceramics Christmas Tree decoration. She too did all 12 days, so we’ll see her again. Here’s her calling birds.

5. Jami Moss Wise

Do you remember her surrealist partridge with lurking cat? Here’s Moss Rose’s Art take on the Four Calling Birds theme. I think they’re stealing from the public line: someone should do something.

6. Carolina Buzio

Carolina from Germany also did cards for all 12 days and here’s her very festive Calling Birds.

I’ve decided to continue showing you beautiful stuff (or at least stuff I think it’s beautiful) even after Christmas, but instead of having monographic articles featuring single illustrators I’ll be grouping them with themes. As a theme I’m picking the Twelve Days of Christmas, a British carol I adore. If you never heard it (you’re clearly not Britsh) I suggest you take a look at this incredible performance.

architecture, engineering and construction

Fuorisalone 2026

I am not ready. I am so not ready. I feel like I just got back from Taiwan (which I did), Rome in between, and now I must prepare to depart for Denmark and I am so not ready for the Design Week. Still, the

Read More »
books and literature

Project Hail Mary

I really wanted to like this book, having liked The Martian and… well, we don’t talk about Project Artemis. I enjoyed the movie just fine, and I hoped the book would fix some oversimplifications and convenient occurrences depicted there. Also, the main character is a

Read More »
architecture, engineering and construction

The Standard, the Tooling, the Agent: Three Futures for BIM

Some people asked me what I think of AI in the new Revit 2027. Other people asked me what I think of the entire Autodesk Cloud ecosystem being rebranded as Forma. More people requested I express an opinion on the lack of mention to agentic

Read More »
Share on LinkedIn
Throw on Reddit
Roll on Tumblr
Mail it
No Comments

Post A Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

RELATED POSTS

Fuorisalone 2026

I am not ready. I am so not ready. I feel like I just got back from Taiwan (which I did), Rome in between, and now I must prepare to depart for Denmark and I am so not ready for the Design Week. Still, the

Read More

Project Hail Mary

I really wanted to like this book, having liked The Martian and… well, we don’t talk about Project Artemis. I enjoyed the movie just fine, and I hoped the book would fix some oversimplifications and convenient occurrences depicted there. Also, the main character is a

Read More