Looking Closely, Very Closely
So much of design is learning to look. There are many views available and I’m not just talking about which direction you are looking from, but how much of a piece you are seeing. From across the room, the entire form is obvious. As you get closer, individual shapes come into focus and finally, you get near enough to experience the intimacy of touch and to see the small details of the surface quality. As the designer and maker, you get to curate the experience from every view and distance.
I’ve had lots of time to think about this while turning for an upcoming class, which means over 70 parts. I love turning, it’s the epitome of shooting for perfect and settling for beautiful. I really do my best to nail the shapes and surfaces, but to me, the subtle variations contribute to interest in the chair.
Here is a gaggle of roughed out parts that I made I made this week.
Humans are pattern seekers. We search it out in everything we encounter, making objects read as the same, even when they aren’t. Upon first view of a chair, you may not immediately notice any variation in the parts, but once you do, it can be a joy to explore them. Over the years, I’ve noticed that I don’t detect if parts are dissimilar as quickly as I do if they are identical. Once I pick up on them as being duplicated, the sameness jumps out at me and my exploration at that scale ends.
Here is a little “looking test” I made. I’ve isolated the turnings to their silhouettes to make it easier to see. One of these sets of four is the same leg duplicated through he magic of computers and the other are four different legs.
It might be hard at first to see which is which, but looking closely and comparing different details will make it obvious, and once it is, your eye will lose interest in the duplicated legs and focus on enjoying the details in the other set.
I fully embrace the natural variation in handmade parts, but I think there’s a potential problem taking it too far, to the point that is becomes a focal point just as the distracting or uninteresting as the sameness of duplicated parts. I think of it like a singer with who lets their voice crack a little in an expressive way when hitting a note. If they cracked their way through the whole song it would be unpleasant and annoying, but those unexpected breaks can be so engaging.
Variations in surface and shape is especially powerful when hung on strong proportions. Likewise, if the surfaces are uniform and shapes are very close to identical, subtleties of proportion and line can ring more clearly.
