The thing about découpage is that as soon as you see it -- a lampshade with cutout roses on it say, or a wooden box decorated with pasted-on teddy bears -- you immediately think: 'Hey, I could do that.'
And probably you could. Maybe you already have: redecorated a tissue box in Grade 5 art class or glued a paper border of vine leaves onto a plain white table cloth in the days when you believed that Martha Stewart mattered.
Where are those treasures now? Consigned to the handicraft trash heap along with the wraparound skirt you once sewed for yourself and the needlepoint sampler you never got around to stretching and framing. Because the thing about crafts is that after all that work, they look, well, homemade.
Not the work of Scott Potter, a young découpage artist from Maine, who was in Toronto recently to promote his works at Birks' Bloor Street store. Most of Potter's creations don't even look like découpage.
Take his glass vases and bowls. Potter starts with clear, hand-blown glass from Europe. He carefully cuts out leaves and flowers from specially designed pre-pasted paper using surgical scissors (the kind plastic surgeons would use if they were giving you an eye tuck), soaks the cutouts in water before arranging them on the inside of the vase or bowl. Then he covers them with a background of handmade Japanese paper in gold or silver. After that, many layers of sealer are applied.
The finished product looks more translucent than fine porcelain, the outside layer of glass giving the background texture and depth as well as a polished sheen. But it doesn't look anything like the découpage you're familiar with.
Potter, a former professional ballet dancer with an affection for art and design, is self-taught.
After seeing a museum exhibition about European print rooms (18th-century rooms that were decorated with découpage), he thought (as we all do) "I could do this -- on anything."
But unlike you and me, Potter has been very successful in parlaying his passion for cut and paste into a career.
His work is sold at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman in New York. And here in Canada, he has been carried exclusively at Birks for about five years.
A simple luncheon plate retails for $295. A tulip-shaped vase adorned with grapes and peonies fetches $895. He also makes dinner service, sushi plates, candy dishes and furniture.
"My work attracts a lot of collectors," Potter says. "Once people start buying it, they keep coming back."
An expensive hobby, considering that découpage is traditionally known as the poor man's art. Royal wannabes used it to decorate their homes and furniture because they couldn't afford to hire real painters. Some of the artisans were so skilled that there work was often mistaken for hand painting.
Potter shows me his pièce de résistance -- a stunning, scarlet six-by-six-foot folding wall screen decorated with intricate borders and cutouts of framed wildflower prints that give it a trompe l'oeil effect. This piece, which really does look like découpage, retails for $18,000.
It's beautiful. I run my hands over the heavily lacquered cutouts.
"Yes," I think. "I could do this."