This small charm carries a single mule, drawn in deep brown-black and set against a pale, blue-grey courtyard scene faintly patterned like an old document. Made by hand in New York, John Derian's illustration is cut and collaged beneath a thick, faceted block of hand-blown glass, the mule's shadow rendered softly at its feet.
Compact and weighted in the hand, it moves easily between rooms, at home on a windowsill, a vanity tray, or lined up alongside other small objects on a shelf. Each piece is cut and set individually, so the crop of the print varies slightly from one to the next.
Dimensions: 3.8 × 4.5 cm. Made in New York City.
Collaged paper beneath hand-blown glass.
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.
