A shape limits our life; we live into our own shape, i.e. our body, that ancient covenants used to consider a unique entity together with mind and heart, contrary to our today’s belief (Leb, Nefes, Ruah, Basar). In ancient Greece named it psyché, i.e. “soul”. Appearance and material, the basic essence of the world (I do not have soul but I am soul!).
Restoration and furnishing – Country house upon the hills of Staffolo (Architect Sergio Marinelli)
We are just like containers that include life and that show our culture, what we actually are. Novels by Somerset Maugham or Michela Murgia include several shapes: a broken glass of whiskey, or Sardinian Pecorino cheese that is nothing more than the shape of milk after the work (Opus) of time to become what it is.
“I find you in a good shape”, we usually say, humanity shapes and identifies itself in these descriptions, while we let the water flow from the tap and into a pitcher or we pour it from a plastic or glass bottle.
Clothing covers our shape and the way we dress is the way we express and distinguish ourselves from the others, as is common, it makes as recognizable, readable, but also it protects and hides. The whole world is full of contents, Man does nothing more than containing, separating and then again combine and hold. We also usually say that “your house is the extension of our own soul”, “made to resemble and look like anyone who lives it”.
A work for distinctiveness is made: furnishing is like expanding yourself, even if only among four walls, where you can live also in the everyday recurring gestures.
Professional architects and interior designers help us for the furnishing of our home, so that it fully represents our performing language, in harmony with our troubled schedules, an instant style so to say, not thinking about the differences, attracted by aesthetics and not by contents.
The conceptualization of dwelling is mouthpiece of our neurosis, a metaphor for the world we live in and we would like to escape, we refine our homes with contents made by others, maybe very soon (“they’ve been just great! Very fast with their job!”) and here it comes the style: essential, clean, bright, rational, ethnic, romantic, elegant. Concepts that take space in an empty and always more nihilistic time, they gain their own life as if they were filling our life.
What is furnishing if not a language? Aren’t there maybe several languages and vernaculars, that differ from countries, that represent our history and our cultures, i.e. the contents of the container, our “psyché”? Why then should we speak only one language, when speaking about styles of a home, with materials that look the same? Why shouldn’t we respect the language of a land, giving ourselves to shapes and substances that come from unrelated places?
“We want to furnish with a certain feeling”, is what we usually hear, without considering that there’s nothing extemporaneous in this word, nothing remains, everything changes suddenly, just like our projects, our lives.
To let something remain, we have to keep in mind that haste is a poor advisor. Haste is evil work, as our ancients used to say. Good products need long and slow cooking, otherwise they get burned. The distinction is work of time.
