Living with Objects

There is a Japanese concept — mono no aware — that translates, imperfectly, as "the pathos of things." It describes the particular kind of beauty that comes from impermanence: the cherry blossom is beautiful because it falls. But there is a complementary quality in objects that do not fall, that persist, that accumulate the evidence of a life lived with them.

The oak table in the Paris commission has, after eighteen months, developed a darkening at the end where the client sets her morning coffee. The copper lamp in Copenhagen is turning a deep, uneven green on the side that faces the window. The linen throw in the London apartment has softened to a quality that could not have been purchased — only lived into.

The Object as Witness

Objects that age honestly become witnesses. They carry the evidence of their time in a place. A chair that has been sat in for twenty years carries in its grain and patina a record of those years — not abstractly, but materially. The record is in the wood. This is why we insist on materials that age well: not for sentimental reasons, but because a material that ages well is a material that tells the truth.

A material that resists aging — lacquered, sealed, protected against every contact — is a material that refuses to participate in the life of the space it inhabits. It remains a stranger. We are not interested in objects that remain strangers.

Choosing Less

The most consistent thing we observe in the homes of people who live well with objects is not the quality of individual pieces — though that matters — but the restraint of selection. Forty objects in a room, each one known and loved, creates a different quality of inhabitation than four hundred objects, however fine.

The discipline of removal is harder than the discipline of selection. We are trained by our culture to add. The removal of an object from a room is experienced, almost physically, as a loss — even when the space is improved by its absence. This is something we must learn and relearn, repeatedly, against the current of our own instincts.

On Permanence

We are often asked whether it is reasonable to invest in objects meant to last decades, when life itself is so uncertain. The question contains its own answer. It is precisely because life is uncertain that objects of permanence matter. They are a form of statement — not of wealth, but of intention. Of the belief that the present moment is worth furnishing with care.

The object that outlasts its maker is not a tragedy. It is the completion of a circle. The maker's hands in the clay, the clay in the kiln, the kiln in the room, the room in a life — and then in another life, and another. This is what we mean, finally, by material honesty. The material does not lie about what it is. And neither do we.