Beyond paper works

Once confined to a 500-square-foot space within the French design boutique Bourgeois Boheme, the Voila gallery dedicated to works on paper has just relocated to premises that are 10 times larger. Keeping the focus on old manuscripts, books, and posters like the one shown here by French graphic design superstar Michel Bouvet, Belgian owner Katrien Van der Schueren says she now has the room to showcase artwork by abstract painter G. Wahl and a stash of unique vintage items she has found in Europe and the U.S., including boxed specimens of a French collector’s butterflies and beetles from the 1940s through the ‘60s. Some of her recent discoveries are eye-catching objets d’art that can serve functional purposes: Galvanized copper glove molds, $110 each, can be used as jewelry valets or bookends or massed together as an installation, and a French studio camera from a 19th century Paris manufacturer, $4,500, is an evocative industrial antique. Van der Schueren also repurposed these American railroad crossing signals, circa 1950, rewiring them as a pair of sconces that sell for $2,450, and four 5-foot-diameter clocks from a French town hall tower that are $8,000 each. 518 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 954-0418, www.voilagallery.com.

-- David A. Keeps