Ok so I started with the miniscule black and white tiling, which took about three days.
Then came the veneerwork, which I was a bit rusty on so I thought I would be worse than I was – and I started with the grey one. I did a lot better than expected, which is no use for kitsugi really (you need errors for kitsugi) but at least I feel a bit better about doing some more. I then sanded and varnished the veneer about five times before I proceeded.
Next came the coloured paper, the celluloid, the hessian and the slate. All of those were relatively simple jobs. The cameos on the brown one were original Victorian shell cameos and are all different. You can see them on the orange paper run to the right.
On the left you can see I used some miniature Victorian perfume labels on the turquoise to the lower paper run.
I was very fortunate that a collector was selling a lot of very high quality dolls house stuff, so the musical instruments etc came from there.
The dude was very well dressed, so I got ebony glove stretchers and a button hook, several pocket watches and general ideas from that.
The tea sets are from very high end ceramic makers and would be very expensive were you to buy them new.
The little notes are 17th century Italian song titles because I happened to find some.
Otherwise the circles are harris tweed from my personal collection of swatches, I spent about two days embossing the metallic sections and then a couple of nights working on the decoupage and collectors postcard section.
Everything had to be varnished very carefully because of the risk to the leather from the finishing coats of resin.
To put into perspective how expensive a job like this can be, the ceramic black and white tiles alone cost about 40 quid as they are a specialist item.
Was it worth it? Well we seem to have an optimal figure for leather varnishing, which is good and about 6 coats. Basically the leather drinks everything you put on it, so you have to judge it by what it’s doing – I went too far with the grey one but hey, he’s an asshole so who cares? I also learned that work like this is a lot harder than it looks.
I used the signals he had given in the interiors to theme the piece. As it turns out he is a twat, so this is probably all there is to him and he probably thinks I’m psychic rather than understanding that this is an answer to his own work on his coffee shops.
I will grudgingly admit that it was a good commercial image, but a complete waste of time and money due to his being a complete wanker. It is not like he is going to do anything basically decent like apologise. He will just sit about and look miserable until he forgets and tries to take the piss out of someone else.
Now thinking of offering to revamp someone else’s coffee shop just to poke him in the eye.
Anyway, it was intended for the bored children in his businesses so as a practical piece it is fine, but he has made it a waste of my time by being a dick.
Isn’t it interesting that I’m percieved as worthless and yet I’m the one giving the gift?