Desig House: The irresistible world of John Derian

Designer John Derian (known for his decoupage plates, platters and bowls that are handmade in his studio in New York) has compiled 400 of his favourite designs into a beautiful new picture book. Let the man himself introduce you...

In 1983, I found a box of broken-up antique books and loose papers at a flea market in Salem, Massachusetts. Inside that box were two oversized, very colorful nineteenth-century floral prints. The images were charming and a bit naive. I was struck by the intensity of the color, especially given the age of the prints. It got me thinking about the power of the printed image, and about a time in which we learned about things-from news to natural history, from craftmaking to human anatomy-solely through books. The images were like hidden treasures: beautiful, funny, folksy, and ultimately educational. Most were created before the advent of photography. They were either drawn from life or based on the written word. Some were realistic, and others-like a frog's human eyes or the crazy pattern on a horse's coat-strayed from reality in the most charming way. I felt I had rediscovered a world I once knew, but it was as if I were being retaught by someone from another century.

I didn't imagine then that I would spend the next thirty years of my life collecting and sharing the printed image. I have always been inspired by the natural world, and the beauty and charm of the fine-etched and hand-colored images I discovered became a way for me to express that interest. In 1989, I began using these images to create decoupage (the art of decorating objects with paper cutouts), and quickly found that it was a way for me to combine my childhood love of making things with imagery that speaks to my aesthetic sensibility. Reprinting these images is my way of sharing these incredible finds.

In 1995, I opened my shop, John Derian Company, on East Second Street in New York's East Village, and every year since I have created two collections, totaling more than seven hundred new decorative pieces annually. Some images are used in only one season's design, while others appear again and again. Most of the images I use come from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century books that were originally created for instructive purposes. My search for imagery is ongoing and never-ending. It continues to be fun and exciting-just when I think I've seen it all, I discover I haven't. And when I come upon something that resonates with me, it's when I feel that the artists and printmakers have left something of themselves beyond the clinical or instructive. There is a bit more than just an illustration of a giraffe or a flower. There is something of the unintentional, something of the personal, something of the artist himself. A little like how we ourselves might connect with these giraffes or flowers when we encounter them in the physical world.

This book contains nearly three hundred of the thousands of images I've collected in over thirty years of design. I am not an expert in the historical significance of these images, and this book is not a scientific catalog. It is instead a representation of my emotional response to this material. Some images are featured as I found them. In other instances, I've enlarged part of a print to emphasize that special spark the original illustrator created. This book continues what my work has always been about-sharing the images I discover and ultimately connecting people with the beauty of these centuries-old treasures.