Friday, August 22, 2014

There's probably a reason why Friedrich Nietzsche didn't build houses

After a visit to the supermarket where, in one of those futile greetings exchanges, the manager informed me he was "blessed" I, humbled as I was to have been in the presence of one of the chosen and wondering if there was a national dress code for supermarket managers – pleated trousers, heavily starched shirt, co-ordinating tie, and Italian loafers – I set off for the bookstore.


I could say I'm not sure what I saw there says about interior design publishing but, frankly, I am sure – it's mostly dross and, in my local Barnes and Noble (the only bookstore within the perimeter as far as I know) there is shelf after shelf and table after table to prove it.


There's probably a reason why philosophers don't, generally speaking, build houses and there is likely a good reason why decorators shouldn't philosophize. Architects, on the other hand, are almost impossible to prevent from doing so, such is their training. Gobbledygook rules, etc. 

The following quotations from one of the books above, each a sentence a page, suggest tenets brought down from the mountain top yet the suspicion that the burning bush was merely a hollowgram cannot be dismissed. 

We want to be released from the invisible barriers that separate us from the natural world, but we also crave a comfortable place from which to do this – a pillow of moss or a warm rock behind our backs.

Returning home from expeditions, we bring back souvenirs – talismans endowed with nature's power to ground us with the knowledge that wealth comes not from wares, but from what lies around us.

Worldly goods have found their way to this house in the woods where they rub shoulders with finds from nature.

This house has no wanderlust. It knows where it is and is satisfied to be there.

Sentiments, to my mind, worthy of Pseuds Corner. However, the quotations above do fall into a major design category – vignettes. They are typographical vignettes in a book filled with photographic vignettes. 

Are vignettes a major design category? From the point of view that vignettes are heavily used in book publishing and on decorator sites – as if every vase, chair or table, Mr DeMille, is finally ready for its closeup – then vignettes are a category. They are, in my opinion, something more than filler, for in the blogging world vignettes allow enthusiasts to appear as professionals – so common have they become in the visual language of design. I wonder sometimes if by focussing this way the big picture is lost. 

Vignette as design is a theme I want to explore in the coming weeks. 

18 comments:

  1. Vignettes are first cousins to Tweets, wouldn't you say?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Toby Worthington, thank you. That's harder to answer than I thought it might have been. Is it because I'm not sure what a Tweet is? I've never done it or had it done to me and I think I'm thankful for it. Vignetting, on the other hand, happens to me all the time – every time I step outside the door I'm made to wear a pocket square.

      Delete
  2. This made me giggle uncontrollably -thank you for that!
    I agree that there is much too much focus on vignettes and small details in general. Whats the point of a lovely corner if the entire house is a mess or doesn't work well. You see that particularly in the blog world. I may be overly organized but I think you start big and work small.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ArchitectDesign, thank you. I'm glad you took it well – as you know, some of my best friends are architects and one of them, being Yale trained, speaks the highest form of gobbledygook.

      Vignettes have blossomed, if that's the right word, over the past couple of years. I blame David Hicks, of course, with his fiddling around with so-called tablescapes and leading all the mediocre decorators to follow suit.

      Delete
  3. Blue,
    I've been going to Tall Tales Bookshop at Toco Hills for more than twenty-five years. It's definitely well inside the Perimeter and is a lovely little independently owned shop. They are more than happy to order anything they don't have in stock. Leaving your house, make a left on Lindbergh/LaVista. The shop is between Pike's Nursery and Kroger. I'm in no way affiliated with this business and this is certainly not a sponsored post — I'm just a longtime very satisfied customer.

    Yours,
    Jeff

    Tall Tales Book Shop
    2105 Lavista Rd NE #108
    Atlanta, GA
    (404) 636-2498
    http://www.talltalesatlanta.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jeff, thank you. I did not know about this bookstore. I only ever drive through Toco Hills – not knowing anyone who lives there – so I'm glad to have the information. I'll be there looking around next week. It's good to hear of a local bookstore surviving the downturn.

      Delete
  4. Can't wait. Vignette or tableau? I don't know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. donna baker, thank you.Vignette or tableau? Interesting question and certainly one to think about.

      Delete
  5. Well, this should be fun. Vignette. Even the world sounds pseudo—as I suppose all words do if you say them over and over again as Emerson once observed. It feels a bit Proustian, this obsession over the minute, while the world goes by. It amused on this very hot day in August—mother nature's vignette to remind us that it may well be the middle of August and we've gotten off lightly for the most part this summer—but damn this week is to be a vignette for the hades of hell.

    As for those who feel blessed, I can't run from their moon-faced nonquestioning brains fast enough. So glad you found a bit of diversion in a temple of books, however dribble filled.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. home before dark, thank you. Strange as it is, this emphasis on vignetting, it is a phenomenon could repay looking at. Symptomatic as you imply? I think, most certainly.

      Blessed? Ego run rampant, if you ask me.

      Delete
  6. I want you to know Bill Stout's Books on Montgomery Street. You will absolutely never be unserved again.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Laurent, thank you. StoutBooks in San Francisco, I assume?

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think every architect I know thinks he/she is a philosopher, so the reverse might sometimes occur.

    Getting a whole room pulled together to stand up to the scrutiny of a high-resolution photograph is difficult if the room is not exceptional. Therefore, magazines find it an easier path to success to focus on just a limited view, the vignette. At least they usually avoid the never-successful binding crease of a two-page layout.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Guilty as charged! My modest blog is full of photos as vignettes. However, in my defense, I do not consider myself a photographer or a designer. Blogs are blogs, while books are books. God knows creating the former is a piece of cake compared to the latter. However, what I hear you saying is that those writing books are no better than bloggers. Has the sky has fallen?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Daniel James Shigo, thank you. I think you missed you missed the point I made – bloggers becoming decorators by means of vignetting. Your blog is excellent and filled with photos that are beautiful and personal and, as far as I am concerned, outside any point I was making.

      Delete
    2. Oh dear, Blue. I am sure I have missed the point, though, is sounds like we are saying the same thing, after a fashion. Bloggers becoming decorators? One needs more than a page of pixels to do that! Thank you for your sweet words. Drinks in Gotham soon!

      Delete
    3. Daniel, I consider you a friend. We will be in Gotham in October and looking forward to seeing you.

      Delete