Slideshow: Collins Gets Cocky
Life on a Texas ranch provided Enid with an endless variety of subjects for her designs. Colorful cocks were one of her favorites — and ours. Here is a small sample from the collection. (Hover on image for description.)
Life on a Texas ranch provided Enid with an endless variety of subjects for her designs. Colorful cocks were one of her favorites — and ours. Here is a small sample from the collection. (Hover on image for description.)
An early design, this box bag draws on a common sight on 19th-century American farms and ranches, the barn’s weathervane. The detailed feathers in the screenprint design are more intricate and less abstract that Enid’s later takes on roosters.
This 1965 design almost makes something royal or sacred of the bird, rendering him in gold, adorning him in jewels and surrounding him in stars. Note how the design is becoming more abstract.
Encrusted with jewels, this cock evokes the pride and pageantry roosters symbolize.
Many of Enid’s “cock” designs keep it simple, featuring only the rooster and the sun, both to convey the obvious morning wake-up call, but perhaps also the pride of the rooster that the idiom evokes. “Cock of the walk” is a colloquial metaphor from 19th-century America that refers to someone who’s full of himself and thinks everyone should defer to him (not necessarily because he deserves it). The “walk” refers to a poultry enclosure.
As time went on, Enid’s cocks became more abstract, as this example from 1967 shows.
This variation of the 1967 design features the stylized rooster and sunburst in black, with striking contrast provided by amber and crystal gems.
This black and gold variation of a 1966 design swaps the rooster for one of Enid’s other favorite feathered subjects, the peacock.