The Guild's First Press

“The classical language is a tradition characterized by its transformations. Every age takes its previous uses and lessons and transforms them to reflect yet a new culture’s identity; and so it has gone for millennia.



Much of the language’s beauty is in its adaptability and flexibility to respond to the times while maintaining a thread that binds us all to nature. It uses a thread that Plato called, “nature’s greatest secret”. A common, singular element found in all things NOT man made. This is the basis of the classical language. The ability to go “simply” from the “one to the many”; allowing the inherent simplicity of complex beauty to emerge; it is NOT the confusion of the “complicated.”



When understood and employed by man, its use allows our works to have a natural resonance with the nature that’s in us. These works resonate with nature and us because how they are made is how we are made. We are nature too.



It’s Plato’s recognition of the “secret”, he empirically observed in all of nature that allows man to transcend the bonds of earth through our individual works. Its importance has been recognized, through to modern times as evidenced in its mandated use in the ecclesiastical commissions of the church, eastern temples, Mesoamerican ritual sites, and the list goes on. Its existence crosses all times and cultures; the “secret” was observed, recognized and employed by all cultures at some time.



Ms. Davis’s “The Guild Atelier” can only be seen as another necessary and continuous extension of Plato’s secret of nature in man made art. A necessary continuation of the conversation started thousands of years ago. At worst, those with the skills learned are excellent beyond the norm; those with the skills and the ability to transcend them are masters, like her. There is no beginning, middle or end, just the continuation of the conversation.



The real beauty is that there is not an end, just the continued elation of the life long search.”





Professor Demetria Papadakis