I read it yesterday; that's some fantastic writing right there.
Fascinating. Reminds me of some of the arguments I used to have with my mom about furniture.
I once brought a girlfriend home whose Dad was someone my Dad knew, and my Mom said: "At last you're going out with a girl of our class." So we had a fight, and I realized I was an anti-snob. Is that the same thing as being pro-shabby?
Modern "decorating" is definitively tacky. All these leather sofas, stainless steel crap -- tacky
No way. If I had the money, it'd be steel and stone as far as the eye could see at my place.
And if anyone desires some shabiness, I suggest having a couple kids. Believe you me, plenty of "utilitarian" and "make-shift" will come your way.
Bah. I think Kotsko's having authenticity issues. To the w-lfs-n-Mobile!
Kotsko so shabby, he ain't that shabby.
I didn't want to taunt Kotsko, but I am the Michelangelo of shabbiness.
re: 7
With all respect, JE, I believe that I might give you a run for your money in that regard. When you look up "white trash" in the dictionary, you see a picture of the inside of my house.
My room is pretty shabby. My appearance, sometimes shabby-chic, sometimes just shabby.
I've been putting off buying new furniture until the kids are old enough that it won't get trashed. And the dog dies. Sheepdogs are pretty long-lived, so we've got a ways to go until we get a couch without identifiable baby-vomit stains.
until the kids are old enough that it won't get trashed.
That would be when they move away to college.
My aesthetic for decorating is charming and only somewhat ordered eclectic clutter. I once housesat at a house in Berkeley that was basically my dream. It was in the hills and had a view of the Bay. I don't remember perfectly what was in it, just the sense of abundance in the living room with big windows; I know there was a grand piano with a big dusty runner and maybe a candelabra, and lots of objets from all the rich owners' travels, but not displayed like treasured art, but like bric a brac. That's what I like--bric a brac. There was a sense of abundance everywhere; the CD case was filled with music I was interested in. Along the same vein, pantries filled with food I'm interested in are pretty emotionally satisfying. Also, when I went to Ohio to work for a 527 in 2004, I stayed in the vacated room of this rabbi's version of this, although a little too neat. It was filled with beautiful embroidered pillows and music boxes and puppets and wind chimes, and everything was actually gorgeous, not tacky or tasteless at all. I effused to the rabbi about how that room was like fairyland, and how much I loved staying there. Their whole house had that pleasant abundance. When I got there they fed me some yummy olives and some amazing fruit I'd never had before--I don't remember what it was. Although it was all, like the girl's room, a little too ordered.
In my kitchen I have a complete multi-level ecology: fruit-flies, spiders, and spider-hawks. In Taiwan, cockroaches, ants, a wasp nest (solo), a gecko, and a 5" spider.
It's funny how your opinion of your parents' taste changes as you grow up. When I was young, I was embarrassed to bring people over to our house, with our bizarre custom-made furniture, shelves full of antique irons, tables made out of old sewing platforms, modern coptic-iconography-inspired paintings, turned-wood screens, iron-and-glass light fixtures modeled after ones from the nineteenth century, and granite and stone flooring instead of carpet.
But when I was about sixteen, I realized my dad was a genius.
And, in line with that other thread, writing that comment totally made me cry.
Several people have told me that this essay of mine made them cry.
Is Country Living an upper-class, horsey magazine with lots of coverage of the races at Henley? Or is that Country Life? I've seen the snooty one.
BG, I think you're thinking of Country Life.
Silvana, Thank you.
16:
Shit yes, Adam, that was pretty tear-inducing. Hope things are looking more upper-like these days, lad. Whatever happened to that woman? Does she have four shabby kids and a shabby husband?