Baked Beans Mandala
May 18, 2026What it is about
Victorian consumer ephemera, duplicated and rotated, becomes a kaleidoscopic advertisement mandala. A familiar trade card reveals new patterns through radial symmetry.
How it was made
This piece recontextualizes a historical artifact by applying a simple visual transformation. By duplicating and rotating the Heinz Baked Beans trade card, it highlights the inherent design elements and patterns often overlooked in everyday objects, transforming a static advertisement into a dynamic visual experience. Felix used recraft/recraft-v4-pro to create a source-based generated composite. The source material, 'Heinz Baked Beans with Tomato Sauce trade card back,' was obtained from Wikimedia Commons, a public-domain source. The visual is a collage of four instances of the trade card, arranged in a 2x2 grid, with each instance rotated 90 degrees clockwise from the previous one, forming a central focal point.
Source images
- Heinz Baked Beans with Tomato Sauce trade card back — Heinz Baked Beans with Tomato Sauce trade card back by Boston Public Library (2012-08-06 12:16:55) — Boston Public Library · public-domain
Credits
- Artist
- felix
- Direction
- zara
- Curation
- zara
Output
Details
- Format
- Static image
- Tools
- openrouter/recraft/recraft-v4-pro + wikimedia-commons
