Framingham Card Company Wins 2 Guinness World Records For Artwork

FRAMINGHAM, MA - A Framingham card company celebrated its 10th anniversary by breaking two Guinness World Records, using the art of quilling to recreate a Vincent Van Gogh painting into a massive masterpiece that culminated in a Vietnam factory in April.

Quilling Card won Guinness World Records on April 8 for most people quilling simultaneously as well as the largest quilling mosaic. A team of 500 quillers in Ho Chi Mihn City in Vietnam completed the "Starry Night" replica. It took about 40 miles of paper - 191,948 strips - and 3,399 man-hours to create the 15.09-foot tall by 19.07-foot wide piece, according to Veronica Beretta, Quilling Card's senior designer. Attaching the paper strips used 11,970 grams of glue.

"The art of quilling is rolling, shaping and coiling individual strips of paper to create a three-dimensional design," Beretta explained in a recent interview with Patch, noting that the craft has grown in the United States thanks to online quilling groups. "The art form dates back many centuries. It can be traced back to ancient Egypt and was used throughout the Renaissance as well as to adorn religious statues."

"While we didn't create the art form, we repurposed it to bring it into the stationery industry," she added. There are "hundreds of designs" available, which card seekers purchase because the image signifies something special to the recipient, such as a flower or animal.

The project was conceived about four months ago to honor the company's 10th anniversary on May 10.

"It's been a surreal process to have been involved in," Beretta added of the record quest. "Sometimes I forget to admire just how amazing this process really was."

"I was one of the people who said, 'Maybe we should try to set a Guinness World Record,'" Baretta explained with a laugh. "I thought that could be really cool and fun. I ended up eating those words over the next few months."

Sara Schofield, the chief design officer at Quilling Card, added that the company simultaneously worked to establish May 10 as "National Quilling Day."

"The premise was that it was a day not specifically related to our company," she explained. "But it was related to celebrating the art and sharing more education about it. Once we set the holiday, we decided to go for setting the Guinness World Record."

Schofield noted that, while the greeting cards are designed in the Framingham business office, they are produced in Vietnam, the homeland of Quilling Card founder Huong Nguyen Wolf.

She described Nguyen Wolf as "very much a dreamer" who has "grand ideas." One of those grand ideas was to replicate a Van Gogh work that people would recognize.

"Within hours, we were now working on two Guinness World Records that we had to complete in eight weeks," Schofield added.

"Starry Night" was chosen, Schofield said, in homage to Nguyen Wolf, who "reached for the stars" when she started the company a decade ago out of her apartment in Saigon.

Part of what Schofield described as a "crazy whirlwind experience" was trying to figure out how to travel to the manufacturing plant in Vietnam while pandemic restrictions were in effect.

"Huong had originally had a trip planned to Vietnam because we hadn't had a chance to go back there in almost three years," Schofield said. "But in that time, my passport had expired, so I only had eight weeks to get a new one. And on top of that, Vietnam still wasn't open to tourism."

Going to Vietnam had been a dream of Schofield since she joined the company more than five years ago. While travel restrictions were eased by then, the trip nearly didn't happen because of a visa issue.

"Veronica and I couldn't get our visas printed until a couple of hours before we headed to the airport," she explained.

"But at the end of the day - no pun intended - the stars aligned," added Beretta.

The pair had to come up with how to design and complete "what was essentially a big puzzle," according to Schofield. There were also several Guinness requirements that needed to be fulfilled before the judges arrived in Vietnam on April 8 to judge the work.

A digital replication of "Starry Night" had to be created in order to make the paper strips. There was a "complex numbering system" for how the pieces, which included 18 colors, were arranged. Each quiller received a package with specific segments that had to be created exactly in order to accurately represent the original art.

Each of the 285 pieces averaged about 12 hours to complete, Beretta said.

This YouTube video shows the quillers in action.

Quilling Card's workers go through "an extensive training process," Baretta said, which "requires a lot of patience to learn and excel at." It generally takes anywhere from three to six months to master the "quilling alphabet" and learn how to manipulate the paper with tweezers.

"People were thrilled when they could recognize their individual pieces become part of something larger than life," she added. "It was really a team-building, community-rallying experience."

Schofield said the company hired a professional team of builders to assemble the final work, which was placed on magnetized tiles. Workers had to ascend a scaffold to complete it.

"They started at the bottom and worked their way up to the top," she noted. "As the builder put on that very last piece, the whole factory was cheering and clapping. It was such an emotional experience."

Schofield described quilling as a "meditative art." She noted that teachers use fidget toys now to calm students with hand motion, which is similar to the calming effect quilling produces. In the future, Schofield said she would like to bring quilling classes into the community.

Area residents recently had the opportunity to view "Starry Night" in person while it was on display between May 18 and May 22 at the national trade conference for the Museum Store Association called MSA Forward 2022 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

Beretta's dream is that the Boston event will be the first in a series of exhibitions globally.

"We're hoping that this can become a traveling art piece that can go around the world one day and be displayed in museums," she said.

For those who didn't get there, the "Starry Night" card and other works are available at https://quillingcard.com/ for purchase.