Filigree Fenestration 

This evening, I’m taking some liberty, some poetic license, if you will. I will. Will you? Together let’s look through the carriage barn, from east to west, from the former “carriage garage” toward the stalls and paddock. Morning sun at our back and gently illuminating the enclosure gate and the meadows beyond. The focus of this almost chiaroscuro still life is what I’ll refer to as filigree fenestration. It looks like this.

In a moment I’ll show you the same view in black-and-white, chiaroscuro subtly accentuating the interplay of light and dark — apertures, grille, muntins, and gate — framed and focused by the textured perspective of retreating walls, ceiling, and floor.

I happened upon this scene when departing on my morning bike ride. inside and outside interacting as if in conversation or song. A visual melody as understated as it was captivating and infectious. Waves of wabi-sabi wonder swept over me. Paddock door ajar, layering a diamond grid over the rectangular window panes behind it, the composite rhyming with the geometry of the gate beyond the door.

Yes, this is just a barn. Or is it?

The delicate intricacies of filigree, decorative embellishments reserved for fancier fora than barns, are perhaps not accurately applied to the boarding quarters for old school horsepower. Also the cedar gate isn’t even metalwork, so my poetic license looms self consciously. And fenestration is also a stretch. Yes, there’s a double hung, 6-over-6 sash window layered behind the paddock grille, but the grille itself and the open door giving onto the gated enclosure are not windows. And yet they are fenestra of sorts.

Alliteration, of course, draws these two unlikely words together in much the same way as the simplified black-and-white photograph. A comfortable affinity. A marriage of light filtration and shadow play, of exterior and interior aesthetics, of intentional utility and serendipitous happenstance, of poetry and design. This is the secret sauce.

Filigree Fenestration Haiku

Sunlight filtered through
door, window panes, grille, and gate:
textured melody.