Openwork stained glass windows made of... cardboard

Eric Standley, artist and lecturer at the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech, Virginia Polytechnic University. As he himself writes, these patterns are inspired by Gothic and medieval Islamic architecture. And the technique is simple and interesting: these are hundreds of layers of colored cardboard, which he cuts with a special laser.

The subtlety and elegance of the openwork of the "cellulose" stained glass is what distinguishes the works of Eric Standley. Sheets meticulously folded into several piles, cut patterns with jeweler's precision, and now before us are lace "windows" to a paper temple that has not yet been "built".

Eric adopted all the most interesting ideas of oriental architecture to create his own paper world.

Eric begins work on each of his works by working on a sketch in a graphic editor for about a month. And then - the selection of the paper color, shape, pattern, and at the very end - the design of the frame.

Eric decorates some products with picturesque inserts. Pieces of the sea or sky are not photos, but drawings by the author himself.

Paper does not tolerate mistakes, every little detail is an important part of the whole paper "construction". The East, as they say, is a delicate matter! Hundreds of hours of painstaking work are hidden behind the luxurious design.

Thanks to the layering, the drawing turns out to be voluminous, the illusion of infinity arises. Eric achieved this effect by layering paper strips on top of each other, which makes the ornament convex.

Can you imagine hundreds of folded sheets of paper? The thickness of the stained glass sometimes reaches seven centimeters! The most difficult thing in the work is to calculate the right number of layers for the drawing. Then the edges of the work are cleaned by hand and now the paper sculpture is ready!

And this is how the tools look with which the artist creates his openwork works.