A chance hearing of a remix of an old pop song, “She’s got Bette Davis eyes”, was the beginning of the journey which led to this, one of our most striking designs to date.

Having grown up with the original song, we’d of course known about the supposedly stunning eyes of the legendary Bette Davis. I may have even seen several of her films but it was only when I started to research Bette Davis and go through a number of her more classic images that the reality of those eyes began to hit me.

One particular image stuck in my mind, literally, and this became the basis of ‘The eyes have it’. Every line, every curve, even down to each individual eyelash, all entirely cut by hand, faithfully captures and conveys the extraordinary impact of this starlet’s strangely bewitching beauty. Especially when we decided to form a design that literally just focusses on the eyes, nose and mouth and leave out everything else, even the facial outline.

The finishing touch was to intricately incorporate the words of the song which gave birth to this piece into the design. For the background, we decided less is more and kept a splash of colour for the lips and of course, those eyes. The result is a piece which literally stares at you and which many have described as arresting.

Signed by the artists, ‘The eyes have it’ is a genuine 1/1 comprising original hand cut, papercut, mounted on an original, minimalist, acrylic painting. The finished piece is back mounted on archival quality mountboard and framed in in a black, custom-made solid wood box frame.

Framed dimensions: 450 mm (w) x 625 mm (h)

£400