April Fools

At Silver Hill Atelier, one of our specialties of the house are "Trompe L'oeil" works of art.

('Trompe' rhymes with comp, like complimentary, and l'oeil is pronounced 'loy' to rhyme with soy).

Trompe L'oeil is French for "Fool The Eye", and our artists are some of the best. 

The above image from a residential project we completed shows a variety of the staples involved with fooling the eye.  We've hand-painted faux marble to look as real as what Michelangelo might have quarried.

The stone "moldings" around the marble panels are painted.  The 'grout' lines between the larger marble panels above the faux chairrail?  Fake.

The niches holding the lovely greek statuary are all painted.  It's all flat as a sheet of paper.

The primary way that most trompe l'oeil techniques work is by creating painted 'shadows" and "highlights" for those are two important ways in which our eyes naturally perceive depth.

This image a leather button tufted wainscoting is a good example of a couple of other techniques we use to help make a particular work of trompe l'oeil more convincing.  For one thing, it is demonstrating the use of light and shadow to create depth.  The dark portions of the faux button tufting look like they are receding to the eye, because typically we perceive darks and shadows as being further away, or 'behind' other things.  The 'highlight' portions of the buttons seem to come forward, because our eye typically perceives lighter areas as being closer.

What helps this particular trompe l'oeil is the addition of real, true dimensional moldings (the brown lines at top and bottom).  The veracity of these moldings suggests to someone taking a quick glance that the whole scene may be real.

The ceiling above is another good example of real or 'true' elements mixing with painted elements to create a more realistic overall image.  Here, the plaster moldings in the ceiling are real, and the painted tropical sky and foliage behind tend to look more real thanks to their placement 'behind' this plaster molding.  Proper perspective, also shown in this example, also helps to make the scene more convincing - the trees really look as if we are looking up into the sky.

This image above is a small section of an entire room we create for the famed (but now defunct) Russian Tea Room on 57th Street in Manhattan.  The moldings in the image are real, but all of the exotic woods and marquetry?  All faux.  Technically, faux wood graining is called "faux bois", and faux finishes are seen as being distinct from trompe l'oeil, which creates illusion primarily through light and shadow, but hey, it all "fools the eye", so I still think it fits our April Fools entry anyway.

The above picture shows some of the whimsical and fun nature of trompe l'oeil.  The elaborate marble moldings and carvings are obviously painted, yet they're done with in a convincing fashion to play humerously off the real window framing below.

So, when you're looking through our website, be sure to ask yourself that great existential question - Who are these con artists, anyway?