In love with the rough, the imperfect, the simple and beautiful
The entire philosophy, understanding, acceptance and vision of the world that generated the secular Japanese concept Wabi-Sabi, of Buddhist origin, is of moving poetry, extraordinary sensitivity and a rare look that, today more than ever, must be cherished. and protected. There should even be codes of conduct, rules, laws if necessary, to safeguard this approach to life, the human, Nature and aesthetics, and booklets that promote them, from the outset, in schools. Starting from a comprehensive aesthetic approach that values the acceptance of the transience and imperfection of everything that exists, Wabi-Sabi praises the passage of time, the marks it leaves on the paths and in those it crosses. It encompasses a clean and pure look, unpretentious and unpretentious, but attentive, which sees imperfection and the adjective of perfect.
The Wabi-Sabi concept, whose shortest, abbreviated and beautiful description refers to the “imperfect, impermanent and incomplete” beauty is not just a deep-rooted aesthetic or artistic idealization born in Japan, it agglutinates and embodies a way of living, an inclusive and kind way, if you will, of experiencing the world and the things that inhabit it. No preconceptions, no evaluation errors. It has always been linked to simplicity and valuing the process to the detriment of the result. That's why every result is potentially beautiful, or is, in fact, if one has invested in it with love and manual and individual work. It is the appreciation for craftsmanship, for what is born from us to us, to which we dedicate ourselves with soul and passion. With love, therefore. Something broken is not lost, still less becomes ugly. On the contrary, it is repaired, healed and becomes even more beautiful, as it tells a story of affection and dedication. Wabi-Sabi loves the unpretentious hand and the raw material and sees elegance in the crude or untalented forms that result from this union, because the greatest talent is that of acceptance, that of enabling with beauty something where it may not be obvious, but where there is undeniably beauty. It is to connect affectively to things that manifest on the surface the use to which they were and are subjected.
It is the handle polished by daily contact with the hand and the wood cracked from having laughed so long in the sun. This appreciation gave rise to ancestral techniques for repairing porcelain, for example, recovered with gold 'glue', which melts in the cracks - according to a delicate technique that goes by the names of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi, which in english can be translated as ' gold splice' or 'gold repair' – making the piece even more valuable from a Wabi-Sabi perspective. An inclusive approach, that of Wabi-Sabi, which appreciates asymmetry, roughness, harshness and all the 'imperfections' that make a piece, a thing, unique and unrepeatable. A lap that caresses simplicity, austerity, modesty, the Spartan, the rustic, the old, worn and used, a rudimentary and basic monochromatic palette, which does not go further than the color of the materials themselves, and a lap that it still cradles the affection for rudimentary processes of doing and knowing, capable of bringing back to life and use what, for so many others – almost everyone else, in fact – was no longer useful, valuable or worthful.
It is the aesthetics of the simple, which values manual, natural procedures without vain ostentation. It praises the authenticity of the materials and their nature, as well as the path taken. It is the much celebrated Japanese detachment, the delicacy that it puts into the act of serving, others and things, and the respect for those who have lived a long time. The time to appreciate them in silence, to relish their singular beauty. It is finding happiness and beauty in the imperfect, the incomplete, even in the insufficient. An aesthetic vision that elevates the rustic and the ordinary to the exceptional and essential, which welcomes the damaged and is intimately related to it, dedicating time, attention and manual work to it. The nature of the material, which gives way over time, is respected, and the need for repair is understood and not the urgency to throw it away and buy another one again. A crack, flaw or imperfection becomes a subtlety, an added value, an episode of memory, a link in time. And that, all that, as we started by saying, is living in poetry. It is to live in respect and in love. Because only who takes care mends, and one only takes care of those one loves.
Wabi, which means stillness, and Sabi, whose translation gives us simplicity, is close to the concept of slow living, respect for Nature, the exclusion of waste, or good management of resources, the need to slow down and appreciate less aggressive and polluting processes and ways of doing things. Basically, for ways of being, being, thinking and doing happier and in line with the needs and cycles of Nature, of biology, in accordance and in line with the ecosystem. From this level of stillness and simplicity, ritualized in the tea ceremony, everything is respected, everything has aesthetic value, everything has potential and a new chance to shine even more, just like the wooden trunks of our Light It Be table and floor lamps. They too are loaded with marks, scars and temporal memories, of things that once were, and that once lived.
In this aesthetic, ornamental and simple arrangements of flowers and dried plants do the same compliment as the gold that snakes through restored porcelain, the zen garden is an arm of paradise, the bonsai a grandiose project of life, the little treated wood is cherished and everything that seems smaller seems sufficient and, above all, beautiful. It's finding exactly what we need in what others usually reject, deny or put aside. Wabi-Sabi also adds the absence of shame for what each brand implies, what each imperfection entails, what each thing means or meant. It is the modest pride in being and presenting oneself as one is. This too is art.
Our Light Workshop, as we call it, is also Wabi-Sabi and slow design. In it we also recognize the beauty in unused wood, we also discover new futures for knickknacks from other eras, we also fall in love with shapes, materials and processes that do not aspire to perfection other than imperfect. Because the Light It Be lamps are just that, imperfectly perfect. Those who know how to 'listen' to them will also hear many stories of past and future adventures from them, and those who like them will always like everything about them.
Photographs – Pinterest
0