Lacey Storer

John Pottie, owner and curator of the National Silk Art Museum in Weston, Mo., discusses one of his pieces.

The story begins with a collector and a picture.

John Pottie was a collector of beer steins, shot glass­es, baseball cards and pool memorabilia — “All the important things in life,” he says. One day 28 years ago, he walked into a Milwaukee flea market and bought a Victorian-style picture of people playing billiards.

That one picture would eventu­ally lead to another collection for Mr. Pottie, one with almost 300 pieces of some of the oldest and rarest loom-woven silk art in the world.

“It’s a hobby that turned into a monster,” Mr. Pottie says.

The “monster” is countless hours of research, thousands of dollars spent and a job as the cu­rator and owner of the National Silk Art Museum, housed in the upstairs room of Mr. Potter’s restaurant, Charlemagne’s, in Weston, Mo.

Over the years, the museum has drawn in thousands of art enthusi­asts — 14,000 in 2007 alone — including curators from some of the biggest museums in the world.

But let’s back up a few decades, back to the beginning.

When Mr. Pottie first spied the billiards picture, he thought it was printed on paper. Then the woman behind the flea market counter produced a magnifying glass and he realized the picture was actually woven thread.

Wanting to know exactly what it was he bought, Mr. Pottie went to several universities — including Marquette, DePauw and Northwestern — hop­ing to find an answer. He couldn’t get one.

“That’s how I got hooked. Nobody knew nothing,” says Mr. Pottie, “I think that was the biggest thing, what did I have?”

The answer would eventually come from a billiards archives in Pennsylvania. They were able to tell Mr. Pottie that the piece was made by an English company, Stevens Manufacturing.

With that information, Mr. Pottie was able to find some books on Stevens, which finally gave him his answer.

What Mr. Pottie had was a piece of loom-wo­ven silk art. He discov­ered the picture was cre­ated on a loom that used punch cards to weave the silk thread, a technology created by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804.

Information on silk art and Jacquard is hard to find, Mr. Pottie says, because it’s a lost art.

Aside from postcards and bookmarks, the pieces weren’t made for resale.

They were either commis­sioned by the monarchy or the church or created purely for the artist’s bragging rights.

Mr. Pottie estimates he’s spent an average of two hours a day for the past 28 years research­ing, trying to identify the paintings his silk art pieces are based on, as well as the artists.

“And it never stops,” he says.

He’s lucky to identify one piece a year. Of the oil paintings copied onto silk, less than 5 percent are still in existence, he says. Less than 10 percent have documented proof of existence.

The upstairs room at Charlemagne’s holds about 130 silk art pieces, one-third of his entire col­lection.

At special show­ings, like a recent one held on Bastille Day, he shows most if not all of the entire collection. The restaurant is shut down as table become display areas.

“I had never heard of anything like this,” says Carol Reynolds, who traveled from Lawrence, Kan., for the recent show.

“It’s just hard to believe the time that went into it, and it’s hard to believe it’s here in Weston, Mo.”

Mrs. Reynolds was one of the 400 people who visited the museum for a Bastille Day showing, a turnout similar to other shows Mr. Pottie has hosted. Even though the museum receives thou­sands of visitors each year, its popularity still surprises some.

“I kind of forget how big it is,” says Mr. Pottie’s daughter, Adrienne Haake, “until they all come out like this.”

She helps photograph and document her dad’s pieces and design the museum’s Web site. Their next goal for the museum is get pictures of all the pieces on the site. When that happens, they’ll have more artwork online than any other museum, Mr.

Pottie says. Eventually he would like to move the museum out of Char­lemagne’s, to a place of its own with room to display all of his pieces.

Mr. Pottie says he never set out to have the big­gest collection of silk art in the world. He never imagined he would be the owner and curator of a museum. He was just a collector, who bought a picture that would change his life.

“It’s mind-boggling,” he says. “I never expected it.

I never expected it at all.”

Lifestyles reporter Lacey Storer can be e-mailed at lstorer@npgco.com