A single cornflower fills the surface of this paperweight, its spiked petals radiating out in deep teal-blue from a small burst of violet at the centre, drawn with the precision of an old botanical illustration. John Derian's studio cuts the print by hand and collages it beneath a dome of hand-blown glass, which magnifies the illustration and gives it real depth.
It suits a desk or a shelf of garden books equally well, the colour especially rich whenever it catches direct light. The image itself follows the same tradition as an old botanical plate, one flower studied closely enough to be drawn in fine, exact detail.
Dimensions: 8.9 × 12.7 cm. Made in New York City.
Collaged paper beneath hand-blown glass, set on a felt base.
ABOUT the MAKER
John Derian
Since 1989, John Derian has worked from a single New York studio, turning the technique of decoupage into a signature practice of its own. Each object begins with a print pulled from his archive of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century engravings and illustrations: botanical studies, maritime scenes, playing cards, birds, and fragments of natural history. Trained artisans cut the images by hand, layer them beneath hand-blown glass, and seal them so the paper becomes part of the object itself, not simply applied to its surface. The result sits somewhere between a functional object and a small work of art: a paperweight, a desk cup, a cake pedestal, a tray. We carry the collection at Tessuti because each piece holds its history openly. The prints are old, the glass is blown by hand, and no two pieces are ever quite identical, so what arrives on a shelf or a desk carries a little of the studio it came from. These are pieces meant to be used and lived with rather than kept for display alone, gathering the marks of everyday life the way any well-loved object does over time.
