"San Francisco Paper Cut" sounds like a startup that delivers office supplies on demand, or maybe just the name of a very questionable mixed drink. But in this case it refers to an abstract, delicate looking, and painstakingly created paper map of San Francisco. The map is the work of wife/husband design duo Julie Marabelle and Simon Summerscales at Famille Summerbelle based in France.
Arts Decos’ graduate Marabelle, who specializes in paper cut art (presumably much less painful than it sounds), designed the map over the course of a few weeks in 2011, after first soliciting some tips from locals about what visuals might play best for each block. Marabelle’s brother, who lives here in the Bay Area, frequently sent her postcards over the years, which eventually tickled her muse.
It’s less an accurate street map and more a cultural and artistic landscape, although everything is in more or less its proper place. The San Franciscoscape is fourth in a series of city cutouts created by the duo. They also feature cutouts of Paris, New York, and London.
The 23 by 16-inch version you can buy (for 80 GBP, about $114 American, as the present exchange rate has it) is laser-cut from a single piece of paper, but the original was painstakingly carved out with an X-Acto knife over the course of many, many hours, all of which you can see via convenient time lapse in the YouTube video below.
- San Francisco Map [Summerbelle]
- Famille Summerbelle [Facebook]
- San Francisco Map! [Summerbelle blog]
- San Francisco Paper Cut [YouTube]