“The Chinese used the plush fabric as an art medium as far back as the 1200s, and a century later, Marco Polo saw black velvet paintings in India. In Victorian England, black-velvet painting became a pleasant diversion for society matrons. . . . Few serious modern artists worked with it, in part because velvet had a tendency to soak up paint like a sponge and then cake grotesquely, until a landscape or scene started to resemble an aging hooker’s makeup. But [Edgar] Leteg, who as a youth in Illinois had seen a few Renaissance-era velvet paintings in a museum, had an epiphany. He figured out that thin, light strokes scross the fabric would keep the paint from soaking in too deep. His first efforts were female nudes, which had obvious appeal to his drunken-sailor clientele.”

—Martin J. Smith and Patrick J. Kiger, from Poplorica, 2004.