Macrophylla, No. 2

In the 1930s Taylor focused on botanical subjects in her native South Carolina, resulting in exquisite woodblock prints such as "Macrophylla, No. 2." Taylor was familiar with the traditional Japanese woodblock technique; however, she used the white-line printmaking technique to create this print. Taylor learned the method during the summers of 1915 and 1916 while visiting the studio of printmaker B. J. O. Nordfelt in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Rather than the tedious Japanese method of carving several woodblocks to create a single color print, Nordfelt's method allowed artists to create multi-color prints from a single block of wood. A white-line print is made by carving deep grooves to separate areas of different color. The grooves are not inked and appear as white lines in the print, hence the name of the technique.