The rustic style is one of the most emotional. All of it is feeling and affection. Safe hug and comfort. Strength and fortitude. Rustic is based on memory and in the past, hence being an excellent storyteller, expressed in its long rosary of memories and experiences, and crowned with the primacy of uncomplicated robustness which, in a blasé, overshadows aesthetics. A supremacy that does not neglect design or harmony, but whose first praise goes to the functionality and durability of things. That is, for the ability to resist time and fashions. This is an indirect, almost twisted, but effective way of looking to the future and ensuring that all decorative objects will remain useful, resistant, current and, in their own way, beautiful for years to come, or ideally, forever. The rustic contemplates infinities such as the eternal and romantic 'forever', because acording to rustic nothing dies, everything is recovered and reinvented, because relationships and affective bonds are established with objects and their experiences, past and future, and this is an emotional way of making them immortal, even if fulfilling new functions and acquiring other skills. With this safe port in view, the quality of supports and methods is of paramount importance. Reasons and poetics that abound to justify why no other style like Rustic rips spontaneous and involuntary smiles. Reasons and poetics, still, that establish points of direct contact with our lamps DNA our lamps, themselves born of last chances.
To see the essentials
In him everything is strength and nobility, humility and honesty, simplicity and carelessness. The rustic casts a gaze on life and things that smoothes out apparent imperfections, that removes flaws or defects. This look is the tool that perhaps was missing in the woodworking shop, where the wood came out crooked and little improved, which gives the missing coat of paint on the walls – is it really missing? –, the stucco that, after all, did not cover the structural stone of the ceiling, and which painstakingly replaces any detail, greater or lesser, that other perspectives might find missing. This look is precious and is typical of those who make and produce using what Nature offers. It is also characteristic of the hand that, although not mastering an art or subject, ventures into it, with the purpose of creating what is needed, or even what, not being in deficit, one feels like doing in the name of a piece of material that if you find it suitable for any purpose, or just because it's so appealing that you feel like regenerating it, give it a second chance to resist a little longer.
A slice of wood becomes a table, a trunk becomes a lamp, an enamel jug found in grandma's attic gains vase vanities and the old shawl is reinvented in wool pillows. The possibilities are endless, as creativity allows, and if anything can be said about the rustic style, it's that it's also creative. Perhaps more than that, he is inventive, almost alternative. Rustic does not feel the need to purchase again, as long as there is still something to fix in what is already available. Sustainable, autonomous, independent and proudly unexpected. The mastery of a benevolent gaze like this is lacking.
Man and Nature
Born of primordial needs, when the great accessible design chains design did not dominate the market and society was not classified as consumer, it was the traditional knowledge that prevailed, at a time when, in rural areas, the Renaissance man reinvented himself and each one built his own house, as well as part of the furniture and other utensils. He might not be a cultured man, but he was equally self-sufficient. It was enough. Complete and wise ancestors, whose respect for resources and the environment meant that they did not want more than what was necessary and who valued the quality of natural materials more than the art of transforming them. At a time when each object was intended to last a lifetime, this appreciation makes perfect sense. The quality of the products, their expected life expectancy, was the greatest and most desired of luxuries.
Of course, necessity refines ingenuity and the artefacts that arrive from those times that memory tends to erase from time to time will be eternally beautiful and resistant, but which, by virtue of their genuineness, return to us in ever more poignant ways. They are also returning because of the times of excess that we live in, awakening more and more in our consciousness the need to rethink ourselves, to revalidate new, less polluting and extravagant ways of producing and solving needs. Forms, in fact, that the past already contemplated. It is the eternal love of craftsmanship, manufacture and all noble and solid materials that generously lend themselves to handling. Stone, wood, clay, glass, vegetable and animal textile fibers such as wool and silk and ancestral methods of molding and sculpting, weaving and beautifying them are today works of art that make the heart beat faster with emotion. .
Affective resource management
In this economy, where you only want what you need, there is an affective management of resources and modes of transformation. Industries and pollution, intermediaries and surpluses are removed from it. Rustic cherishes amateurism, because when you love what you do, the result can only be beautiful, regardless of the ability to obtain immaculate finishes or pretentious perfections. For all this, rustic is the widest of styles. It is properly applied to the wooden cabin on the mountain, the hut by the beach, the whitewashed walls country house with or, nowadays, to that recovered house whose identity has been maintained, such as the houses of downtown Lisbon and its Pombaline cages (once structural wooden elements designed to be earthquake-resistant), which today are proudly displayed, in a shameless display of their age and architectural wisdom.
Rowing against the current, ignoring the idolatry of the young and the beautiful, remaining faithful to the need to do well, resistant and lasting, more than doing beautiful, the rustic has been delighting a well (in)formed generation of people. passionate about recycling and vintage objects, coming from a time that ignored plastic and trends and that would disdain the idea that every house on the planet could have the same furniture and mass produced by industry giants. Coming from a time when globalization had municipal or national limits. A time when what we wanted, if we really wanted it, could be done by us and some tools. Times of greater innocence perhaps, when time was measured by other clocks, and where the purity of materials and their ability to fulfill their destiny for many years was of paramount importance. The house was not redecorated every season, nor did the decoration have the capacity to bore. As long as comfortable and safe, any chair was for life. Of course it was, not least because the quality of the natural raw materials allowed it and the passion of those who made them didn't fade with time either. Today, everything changes faster, including ourselves. We are more neurotic and consumerist, more dissatisfied and nervous, living in a spiral rather than a perfect circle. It seems that everything we wish for never comes true, because we are always wishing for different things.
Important is the material
That stability, constancy and security that the rustic style guarantees will make more sense today. They seem important in a place we call home where everything is expected to welcome us with the strength and warmth of a friendly hug, a comforting lap and where everything guarantees that everything will be fine, that everything is constant and safe, that we don't need to be afraid. It has never made so much sense to recover the use of organic elements in their most natural form, without unnecessary processing. Not only do these detract from the beauty of the materials, they are also pollution additions. Never like now do we miss that return to our origins, to the land, to what it gives us, to the passionate honesty of the eyes that can see beauty in all this, that can see beauty in simplicity. Simplicity of things and of the manual processes of making them more ours. A look to whom wood will always be wood, whether new or recovered, bought or collected on the beach. Because wood didn't stop being wood just because it brought with it stories of other adventures, of other lives. Eventually, it will be even richer for that very reason.
The new rustic is served 'light' and, too
Of course, we will not, nor can we go back to the past, so the rustic comes to us now by the hand of a conscientious generation of people committed to the same principles of sustainability as in the past, but with the freshness of a welcome mix of design. The primacy of the natural is maintained, of the raw materials that Nature provides and even of ancestral ways of transforming and architecting them, but it opens wide windows to contemporary design, with more refined lines and other care in finishing, but which share the same principle of sustainability and where plastic and synthetic fibers still remain outside the door. A win-win partnership win-win, which gives rustic style more light, more space and more lightness, even if based on the unavoidable wood, solid stone or reliable leather. A serious and incredibly attractive and appealing commitment to the senses and the heart, which is increasingly visible in architecture, engineering and decoration.
Handmade
A primordial trait of rustic style is still maintained: the pieces are handcrafted, that is, made by hand, which leaves intact the appreciation for materials, which overlaps design. designRough and poorly worked woods, in which you can see the veins and knots, stones that are poorly polished so that they look like stone and not any other sterile material, tapestries and textiles close to the original thread… Because they are made of safe and reliable materials, and because they are manufactured and because artifice is not particularly important, rustic furniture tends to be oversized, appearing on a scale that occupies space. Once again, the important thing is function, simplicity and comfort, even if objects or structures seem unfinished, raw or crude, or all of these. The fact that most of everything is handmade under the primacy of resistance and functionality, explains the 'thick' line and some 'roughness'. But all these are expected character traits of the rustic. All this must be expressly cherished. Don't expect perfection, rather heart. But count with uniqueness and exclusivity, as the manufactured pieces are like signed works. No two are alike. Each one is unique and unrepeatable, and about that Light It Be understands a lot, since each lamp that comes out of our workshop is unique, and even if we wanted to, which we don't want, it would be impossible to replicate them.
Earth tone colors
Respect for Nature and all that it provides extends to the rustic color palette, which, unsurprisingly, is fixed on raw and natural tones, since artifice is also unnecessary here. Neutral and welcoming tones, which reinforce the feeling of coziness so typical of the rustic style. Safe tones, which admit a variation of tones that goes from gradation from white to black and from brown to beige, but where dry greens and earth tones come naturally. A set of factors that make this style one of the most inviting and desirable. Far from minimalism and synthetic surfaces, everything about it is genuine, unpretentious and deliciously simple. Isn't that exactly what we want from a house? From our house, mainly? A place where we will always feel good, protected and warm. Even better will be if you can give your personal stamp, your particular signature to this style so in vogue. Work it your way and make it yours and yours alone. Light It Be can help on all of that.
Photographs – Pinterest
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