Handicraft

Handicraft

Daniel Clément’s Handicraft

Every year, three to four artifacts leave Daniel Clément’s workshop. It takes the artist about 700 hours to craft a single piece of furniture, and about 250 hours to craft a treasure chest or humidor. Clément has specialized himself with a unique style of “glass marquetry” (marquetry is the art and craft of applying small pieces of colored glass or other materials to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs, or pictures). Clément’s marquetry is made up of painted and mirrored glass fragments, which cover the entire visible surface of the object. He cuts each fragment into geometric shapes – e.g., irregular quadrangles, circular arcs, triangles, arrowheads, leaf-shaped ellipses – all of which are handcrafted from new sheets of white glass and mirror. He then paints them one-by-one, and then assembles them with precision on a flat surface, having first scattered the whole surface with multi-colored glitter. This gives the finished object its iridescent effect. Each piece has a colored and reflective surface, is composed of hundreds of fragments, and is a uniquely crafted masterpiece.