Arundel Eccentrics

Arundel Eccentrics
Arundel, United Kingdom

Decoupage is an ancient decorative craft — the art of cutting, layering and lacquering paper onto an object until the surface takes on a depth that looks painted rather than applied. Arundel Eccentrics practise it at its highest level, taking vintage enamel pots, buckets, chests and boxes and giving each one an entirely new life.

The work begins with the antique vessel itself. As Brenda, one half of the team behind it, describes: "We take vintage enamel pots and buckets and give them a makeover. We paint them, usually black but sometimes red or racing green with a hint of gold, decorate with decoupage using 19th or early 20th century images, then varnish, varnish, varnish and finish with a coat or two of aging wax. Then finally the pots and buckets get buffed to a soft sheen, et voila." It is slow, exacting work, and no step can be hurried.

Because every piece starts as a different antique object and is decorated by hand with its own images and colours, no two are ever the same. The elephants, the shoal of fish, the shells, the hares — each is a one-off that exists nowhere else.

We carry a small selection of these decoupage pieces for those who want something genuinely unlike anything else. Their work has been stocked by Liberty of London — a fitting home for objects that pair the patina of age with the wit of a maker who sees a plain enamel bucket and imagines a herd of elephants across it.

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