A cat curled into a tight sleeping coil, nose tucked against its tail, is one of the most familiar shapes in any home, and it is the shape John Derian chose for this dome. Made by hand in New York, the tabby is drawn in dense, fine line work in the style of nineteenth-century natural history illustration, then cut and collaged beneath a low dome of hand-blown glass that magnifies the detail.
Set on a desk or bedside table, it holds papers or a stack of post in place, adding a small moment of stillness to a busy surface. Each dome is cut and set by hand, so the print sits a little differently from one to the next.
Dimensions: 8.9 × 12.7 cm. Made in New York City.
Vintage tabby illustration collaged 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.
