1970s “Suddenly It’s Spring” Mid-Century Modern Green Iris Floral Serigraph by Marian Brown Woods, Framed

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A garden of bearded irises on a green ground leads somewhere unexpected: to Woodstock, New York. This hand-pulled silkscreen by … Read more A garden of bearded irises on a green ground leads somewhere unexpected: to Woodstock, New York. This hand-pulled silkscreen by Marian Brown Woods (1900–1982) (alt. sp. Marion) layers flat, opaque inks in blue, rose, apricot, pale yellow and white over a toned background, with spikes of red and violet blossoms and a single pale butterfly. The print is signed in the screen “M.B. Woods” at lower right. In the bottom margin it is signed “Marian Woods” in pencil at lower left, titled “Suddenly it’s Spring” at center, and inscribed “Edition of 18” at lower right. The Frame is 20 x 24 inches. Sight is 13-1/4 x 17-1/4 inches.

Woods was the daughter of Bolton Coit Brown and Lucy Bagley Brown, early figures at the Byrdcliffe Art Colony, founded in Woodstock in 1902 as a center of the American Arts and Crafts movement. Her father founded the art department at Stanford and became one of the leading American lithographers of his generation, and her mother ran Byrdcliffe’s weaving looms. Woods was best known for her ceramics, but in the 1970s she also made and sold silkscreens at California art fairs. Few of her prints appear to have survived, and an edition of eighteen points to studio production rather than a commercial run.

The print is presented in its original oak frame under glass, with the original cream mat over a narrow orange inner mat, and a new acid-free backing. The background ink responds strongly to lighting: it reads as a clear green under full-spectrum daylight and shifts toward olive under warm household bulbs. The primary photograph shows the print under high-CRI daylight-balanced light, and a later image shows it under ordinary room lighting. Photographs were white-balanced to a gray card under daylight-balanced lighting; colors may display slightly differently across screens. See less