Wabi-Sabi Home: Finding beauty in imperfection E-Book

Mark Bailey

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 103

Beschreibung

Wabi-Sabi Home is a look that's rough around the edges and sees the beauty in imperfection but is at the same time creative, modern and brave.

Das E-Book Wabi-Sabi Home: Finding beauty in imperfection wird angeboten von Ryland Peters & Small und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
japanese interiors, Japanese crafts, imperfect style, vintage style interiors, rough around the edges style, Japanese home and garden, wabi sabi

Leseprobe

Wabi

Sabi

Home

Wabi

Sabi

Home

FINDING BEAUTY IN IMPERFECTION

MARK & SALLY BAILEY

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEBI TRELOAR

SENIOR DESIGNER Megan Smith

SENIOR COMMISSIONING EDITOR Annabel Morgan

LOCATION MANAGER Jess Walton

PRODUCTION MANAGER Gordana Simakovic

ART DIRECTOR Leslie Harrington

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Julia Charles

PUBLISHER Cindy Richards

STYLING Mark Bailey

INDEXER Diana LeCore

First published in 2014 as Imperfect Home.

This edition published by

Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields,

London WC1R 4BW

and

341 E 116th Street

New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Mark and Sally Bailey 2014, 2019

Design and photographs

© Ryland Peters & Small 2014, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-78879-091-8

E-ISBN: 978-1-78879-332-2

Printed and bound in China

The authors’ moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

US Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

CONTENTS

introduction

wabi-sabi philosophy

CREASED

{textiles}

SCUFFED

{texture}

SHADED

{colour}

CRAFTED

{handmade}

GATHERED

{collections}

address book

credits

index

INTRODUCTION

This book was inspired by a hand-beaten brass spoon, bought from Tokyo’s Mingeikan, the Japan Folk Crafts Museum. Our spoon was one of a handful that were similar but also different – not just useful but unique, and certainly without the flawless regularity of a machine-made object. The museum’s shop was no ordinary gift shop; it contained a meticulously curated collection of objects by present-day Japanese makers, including ceramics, glass, baskets, paper and metalware.

The Japanese concept of finding beauty in the imperfect and embracing the humble is called wabi-sabi. It is not a decorating style, but a whole worldview. Walking through Mingeikan’s galleries, wabi-sabi was abundantly present, in the simple rustic shapes of early hagi ware glazed pottery or the nubbly, highly tactile cast-iron kettles. These objects seemed to have a soul, not least because their little imperfections were the result of them having been made by hand.

Returning to Japan to take photographs for this book, we found that wabi-sabi was alive and well in many Japanese homes; the frayed, the weathered and the worn are embraced, and ordinary, practical objects are given elevated status by being displayed in a wonderfully measured way. Widening our search, we uncovered homeowners all over the world who appreciate the imperfect. They have created inspiring spaces that are individual, yet share an understanding that wobbly, battered, scuffed, peeling and even broken objects are not just beautiful but preferable to pristine ones, because they bring a place to life and make it feel homely and personal.

Each chapter of this book – textiles, texture, colour, handmade, collections – expands upon an element of the imperfect home. They consider ways to incorporate these features into your own space, and also focus more closely on a single home that encapsulates these ideas. We hope that they will inspire you to see the beauty in the imperfect.

IMPERFECT PHILOSOPHY

Flawlessness is to be admired in some quarters, but it is hard to justify its place in the home. From an aesthetic point of view, rigid symmetricality and uniform textures and colours do little to stimulate the eye, or the imagination. And from a practical perspective, a pristine house will soon be subject to the ravages of daily life – bumps and scrapes are inevitable, even if you are unshakeably fastidious.

We believe in a looser, more relaxed approach. We’re not advocating that you forget about the housework, or let your possessions pile up unhindered, but that you surround yourself with ordinary, irregular things that you love to look at. Indeed, you should welcome them in, as a way to achieve a sense of true homeliness.

This looser approach might mean finding more spontaneous ways to display art or photographs, hanging them from a bulldog clip or pinning them directly to the wall – being more flexible will enable you to easily change things around if you tire of them. It might entail patching and mending your textiles, rather than throwing them away, and appreciating their idiosyncratic new look. A sense of authenticity is much easier to achieve when you choose handmade objects over machine-made ones, especially the humbler items that you touch every day, like glasses and tableware, mixing and matching them with harder-edged industrial fittings to create a pleasing contrast.

When it comes to the backdrop for your objects, a calm, neutral setting will make things stand out. However, if you are lucky enough to live in an older home where surfaces have been built up successively over decades, you may well have a rich treasure trove of imperfect walls, doors and other features just waiting to be uncovered. Try peeling back the layers instead of covering them up, and you may reveal old plasterwork, historic wallpaper and worn paintwork that will add a vital textural element to the home, and which speaks of authenticity.

ORDINARY IRREGULARITY

Surround yourself with things you love to look at, no matter how ordinary or irregular they might be. In the dining room of our home on the Welsh borders (opposite), chalky white walls, flagstone floors and a scuffed canteen table with a black linoleum top provide a stable, unchanging backdrop that allows us to experiment with new ways to display.

OUT IN THE OPEN

Dispense with drawers and cupboards and keep your treasures out on display.

In our home, we use a galvanized metal industrial rail attached to an old French monastery bench in lieu of a wardrobe.

We all delight in the unexpected, and displaying items for their patina, their silhouette or simply their craftsmanship can make you see them in a new light. Objects that are broken, incomplete or obsolete may have lost their original function, but they can still be displayed as beautiful things in their own right or, better still, given a new life. Reusing things will not only challenge your creative skills, but makes for a thrifty approach too. And you can often find that scuffed, peeling and battered objects have a natural affinity with one another, helping to create a sense of harmony with less effort.

Nature also has its part to play in the wabi-sabi home, and not just in the introduction of natural materials, such as coarse-grained timbers or hand-woven textiles. Plants and flowers are the epitome of effortless imperfection, especially cut flowers, which seem to droop and decay just as beautifully as they once lived. The Victorian art critic John Ruskin believed that embracing the imperfect puts us more in harmony with a natural world that is changing, growing and dying all the time : ‘Nothing that lives is rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent,’ he wrote, concluding that ‘to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyse vitality’. Ruskin’s words carry even more weight today, because we need an antidote to our fast, polished, high-tech world. Wabi-sabi is that salve, and home is the place to start.

A similar rail divides the space in our studio, where canvas panels act as walls.

{textiles}

CREASED

Creased, crumpled, patched, frayed and wrinkled: there lies the beauty in old cloth. Once, on a trip to Tokyo, we were taken to see an incredible museum containing a collection of work clothes and textiles referred to as boro, meaning continually mended and patched. The collection of 30,000 pieces was amassed over many years by Chuzaburo Tanaka and is now a national treasure. The clothes were once worn by the peasant farming communities of the snowy northern region of Japan and were handed down from generation to generation. We were encouraged to try them on, and this we found very strange, as normally anything so old and fragile would be kept behind glass and firmly out of reach. This experience had such a profound impact on us that on our return it became one of the founding principles of the wabi-sabi home – boro being the antithesis of modern consumer culture as the fabric reflects the beauty of wear and use. Since then, we actively seek out old fabrics with repairs and patching, and get incredibly excited by them and the ways in which we can incorporate them into the home. Thick Hungarian linen cart covers can be cut up to make duvet covers, and French linen tea/dish towels sewn together to make pillowcases. The list is endless – all you need is some imagination and basic sewing skills, and off you go.

{preloved & faded}

VINTAGE

Part of the appeal of vintage textiles is their rarity; easily degraded by the sun or worn away by use, many fabrics do not last more than a lifetime. It makes the survivors all the more special. Textiles span class, geography and culture – everyone needs to be clothed and kept warm – and can provide fascinating insights into everyday life. Sometimes it is the humblest objects that are the most evocative, like the patched and faded workwear that speaks of hardship and thrift in every fold. Old fabrics are rarely regular, either in their initial weaving or their subsequent stitching together, which gives them a subtle sense of imperfection. But they also age in wonderful ways: falling into rags, fading to soft colours and letting whatever is underneath – horsehair, wool batting – burst through. So they are doubly imperfect, and all the more beautiful for it.

TEXTILES AGE IN WONDERFUL WAYS: FALLING TO RAGS, FADING TO SOFT COLOURS.

MADE FOR SHADE

These indigo-dyed parasols in linen and cotton were used by French shepherds at the turn of the last century to keep off the sun. All slightly different in size and in the design of their wooden handles, they look sculptural as an informal collection of objects, the deep folds of fabric bringing out their depth of colour. Once opened up, the umbrellas reveal an almost tie-dyed effect, with streaks of darker blue created by selective fading.

WHEN IT COMES TO TEXTILES, IMPERFECTION IS SOMETIMES SEEN AS A VIRTUE AT THE MAKING STAGE.

LAYERS OF HISTORY

Imperfection is sometimes seen as a virtue at the production stage when it comes to textiles; this hanging would be a duller proposition if its pattern were regular.

Layering fabrics can make for rich and exotic interiors, whether they are more everyday objects, such as a coat-stand of Indian bags

The passage of time can do wonderful things to fragile fabrics, like this frayed and patched upholstery, bulging with escaping horsehair.

an inviting place to rest.

CAREFREE REPAIRS

Antique furniture can sometimes be a little stand-offish, so grand or so elegant that you don’t want to touch or use it. But there’s something very inviting about the buttoned sofa in Anna Phillips’ Sussex home, in no small part because of the carefree way it’s been repaired, with big patches of fabric stitched over any damage. It’s not delicate, not attempting concealment – just honest.

SOFT LINENS

Anna’s relaxed style has a lot to do with her choice of textiles. She favours washed linen over crisply ironed sheets, which are pleasingly crumpled and get softer to the touch with every wash. Unlined linen curtains in soft colours, embroidered pillowcases and unpretentious furniture all serve to emphasize her taste for the homely and handmade.

{repurposed & restyled}

RECYCLED

‘Make do and mend’ existed as a philosophy for centuries before it was crystallized into a wartime slogan, simply because cloth was too precious to throw away. But beyond mending and patching what already exists, there’s also creative mileage to be had from reinventing textiles as new objects for the home. It sometimes takes imagination to see potential, especially in things whose original purpose is not domestic, like industrial sacking, but these hard-wearing items often make the most durable and characterful homewares of all. Needless to say, it’s also very thrifty, with a little going a long way – it doesn’t take much fabric to make a cushion or lampshade, so small offcuts can often have a big impact.

TEXTILES WITH A TWIST

Industrial textiles such as grain or flour sacks make robust home textiles, with a little intrigue added by their graphic lettering. Two patched grain sacks fill up this bench