A heart-shaped kite, outlined filled with a single flat red, sits at the end of a thin string in this dome, its two tassels drawn in the same loose, sketch-like hand as the rest of the print. Made by hand in New York, John Derian's illustration is cut and collaged beneath a low dome of hand-blown glass.
Set on a desk or shelf, the dome holds papers in place while keeping a small note of colour close by. Each dome is cut and set by hand, so the exact placement of line and colour varies slightly from one to the next.
Dimensions: 8.9 × 12.7 cm. Made in New York City.
Red heart kite 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.
