The Treachery of Images by Steve Plummer

The Treachery of Images

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This is not a pipe. This is not even a picture of a pipe. It is an illusion of a picture of a pipe.

I designed this for Woolhelmina because it appealed to her quirky sense of humour. It is based on a well-known surrealist painting by René Magritte which is currently in Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The painting has the message Ceci n’est pas une pipe, underneath the pipe. This translates as This is not a pipe.

The illusion is designed to be used as a wall-hanging or pillow.

The advantage of making a pillow is that the image can be on one side and the text on the other. The wall-hanging is also shown with both sides but, obviously, you can only see one at a time. The pattern also includes instructions for making a larger hanging with image and text on the same side.

When you look straight at the illusion you only see narrow stripes. The image and text appear when you move around. I used a standard bed pillow which makes it quite fat and rounded. A flatter pillow would make the text clearer.

Different colours were used for front and back but you could use the same two colours for both. In total it requires about 400 metres (440 yards) of DK in dark colours and 280 metres of DK in light colours. You could use any thickness of tarn but this would change the overall size.

The finished piece measures about 56 cm x 38 cm (22” x 15”) unstretched. It is slightly stretched over the board and considerably more stretched on the pillow.

The pattern includes a version of the charts which is very easy to use on a mobile device.