interior finishes

and

furnishings

Rooms are autobiographies written by their inhabitants - they hint (in their bookshelves, in their laundry baskets, in their stained carpets) at how and why a particular life took on its particular form. The heritage industry is well aware of this, painstakingly preserving the homes of the famous dead, hoping to trap their phantoms in the aspic of historical accuracy.
http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/marc_camille_chaimowicz/

"The interior is not only the universe but also the etui of the private person. To live means to leave traces. In the interior these are emphasized. An abundance of covers and protectors, liners and cases is devised, on which the traces of objects of everyday use are imprinted. The traces of the occupant also leave their impression on the interior.”

–Walter Benjamin, “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century”

Jakobstad Museum, Jakobstad FI 

A congregation of things (draft)

We sit at the table, daily. On it are a few items of everyday use: the table salt (which comes in big flakes that we like so much), the pepper in the plastic grinding mill, the honey (turned upside down since it’s running low), two saucers on which sit tealight candles, and two boxes of wooden matches.

The tablecloth is a pale pink, covered in a uniform grid of irregular dots in dark blue. A few crumbs from breakfast, here and there, and a lost, loose thread from somebody’s sweater.

We sit at this table, daily. Inside, looking outwards. The table is arranged from a board and two wooden trestles, against the wall and next to the radiator. It’s warm enough, but for a draft from the unclothed windows.

On the windowsill: a collection of books and printed ephemera from previous residents, several maps of the local environs, vitamins, cold medicine, a bottle of bourbon, a ljung plant in a plastic pot, an empty blue glass vase, a tall box of tealights, and some miscellaneous papers.

We sit around this table, daily. Around us, furniture and things: a dated dark green sofa, above which hangs two geometric abstract paintings that match each other and the sofa in palette, an inoffensive square side table currently serving as a coffee table, a wooden step ladder missing the middle rung, an unplugged boom box radio, two jade plants, and a table lamp facing upward (better light distribution). Black and grey clothes drape gently over the bars on a drying rack, which stands in the corner near the entrance.

We sit around, surrounded by these, our belongings (some borrowed, some brought).

We sit around, amongst, and in a congregation of things.

Grammar of Orn

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