Lingua Franca Label Art

Lingua Franca’s label art is beautiful, but it also tells a story. We are privileged to have permission to use the artwork of two amazing artists, Dale Chihuly and Tallmadge Doyle, on our labels.

Dale Chihuly

Dale Chihuly’s artwork is acclaimed all over the world. He has been at the forefront of a revival of studio glass art that has reinvigorated the craft in traditional European centers, as well as in his native Northwest. He has found inspiration in nature and in the patterns of Native American textiles and woven baskets, and experimented with form, scale and materials. Some of his early works, such as Seaforms, conjure underwater life, however unintentional. Later he developed the Float series based on his experiences on the coast, where mysterious glass floats from Japan would often wash up encrusted with barnacles, calcified white traces, and iridescences.

Larry Stone grew up in a family that loved and worked with glass art. He followed Dale Chihuly’s output from the days of Pilchuck Glass School in the 1970’s and was fortunate to get to know Dale and Leslie through Rubicon restaurant, where four Ikebana sculptures were on loan as a favor to Robin Williams. They were a prominent feature throughout the life of the restaurant.

Dale Chihuly’s art is found on some of the special wine we make from our own and other’s vineyards. There are two images, one for Chardonnay and the other for Pinot Noir, taken from the artist’s drawings on paper with acrylic paint. These two images augment what we consider special, unique and limited productions. You have seen them on The Plow, Hope Well, Mimi’s Mind and Sisters wines.

The limited cuvées of Pinot Noir, featuring artwork known as Black Float, is inspired by the Japanese floats that show up mysteriously in the northern pacific shores. The world, though vast beyond human scale, can be so interconnected that objects from thousands of miles away appear on remote shores moved by unseen currents.

The special cuvées of Chardonnay have Cylinder Drawing on the label and is inspired by Dale’s love of Native American woven basket design. The small dark spots on the body of the cylinder are like the shadows at the intersection of the interwoven fibers in a basket when illuminated from above.

Dale Chihuly’s amazing range of artwork can be viewed at www.chihuly.com.

Tallmadge Doyle

Our principal wines from the Estate are in labels whose art is the creation of Tallmadge Doyle. Tallmadge Doyle works, among other media, in copperplate etchings. She has explored the interplay of the human world, human imagination, with cosmological forces in several series of copperplates that she has created. We selected several from her series on Celestial Mapping, in which 15th Century astronomical charts from the Age of Exploration are found in the background while colorful images, some seemingly inspired by Hubble Space Craft photos, others by the calculations of astronomers, dominate the foreground. You will find these on the Lingua Franca Estate, both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, Bunker Hill and Avni Chardonnay labels.

The art is about man exploring his place in nature, in the world, in the universe—to be filled with wonder, but also to map, discover, and create. What do the stars mean, why are they roadmaps for the journey?

This theme seems to me a perfect reflection of what we strive to do at Lingua Franca, following a thoughtful Biodynamic-influenced philosophy of farming. We work with nature harmoniously, cognizant of the specific place we grow our wines, respecting the native flora and fauna, and cognizant of our place in the universe. Lingua Franca is so oriented that the sun, the moon, (even the recent total solar eclipse) pass directly overhead and make their presence felt. Our exploration is not to find new worlds but to the discovery of unique terroirs, the great vineyard sites, in Oregon.

At the same time, we humans live on a tiny planet in an infinite universe. We are all trying to find our way using imperfect roadmaps and looking for signs. We need a lingua franca to bring us together.

The Avni Pinot Noir label is from a series dedicated to the pioneering astronomer/priest Giordano Bruno, who not only was an early advocate for the sun being the center of the solar system, but who went beyond the Copernican sun-centered theory and predicted in the 16th Century that the universe is infinite, and therefore without center. His concept of the infinite universe, for which he suffered the ultimate penalty, is memorialized on the Avni Pinot Noir label.

You may look at some examples of fine art from Tallmadge Doyle’s portfolio here.