British author, illustrator and painter, Mary Eliza Haweis, wrote a series of essays subsequently captured and elaborated on in her books titled ‘The Art of Beauty’ and ‘The Art of Decoration’ published in 1878 and 1881 respectively. What about Haweis's work is the relevance that some of her ideas still have for our current experience. In particular, her discussion on the importance of thoughtfulness in design seems as relevant today as it was 140 years ago...
An understanding of how to be authentic is not always a given. Modern Western culture praises individuality and authenticity but there is little formal structure in place in our culture and our systems to help individuals to cultivate the ability to listen to their innermost voice. We have an innate desire for authenticity; being connected to ourselves, knowing what we feel, and being able to act on this understanding was a crucial survival mechanism for our ancestors. But cultivating this ability is a practice...
The experience of being human is an embodied one: we know the world through our sense. But as our digital and virtual worlds predominantly use only our visual sense, a grounding antidote to the flatness of our digital lives is to engage our other sense whenever possible. The way we design our homes can either help or hinder the process of engaging all of our sense daily.
Our attention defines our reality; only that which we attend to has the power to shape our world. What we gift this most precious resource to determines the direction of our unfolding lives and ultimately weaves the fabric of our being...
It can be tempting to rush through the process of home-making. Sitting with something unfinished and undone, when we know what it could look or feel like, is difficult. Living in it, even more so. But homes crafted slowly over time, in accordance with the values and rhythms of the people who live within them don’t tend to date in the same way that spaces put together with haste do. For those for whom a slower approach to home-making feels meaningful, we have put together a list of tips that might be helpful in encouraging a slower, more considered approach to home-making.
The growing number of us living in cities and the resulting communal pressure of city life are some of the reasons why so many of us feel a deep longing to reconnect with nature. Stepping out of the digital and virtual and into the real, tangible and natural offers one of the most revitalising elixirs to modern living. For those who experience the longing to feel more connected with the natural world even when indoors, we have put together a few suggestions for how to create a natural home.
There are design aspects that can seem so small that they are practically unnoticeable. And yet by learning to attend to all the little details and learning to implement them mindfully, we can begin to tell a coherent story of how we want our home to feel and the life we want to unfold within it. We highlight a few of the small details worth attending to when it comes to designing the interiors in our homes.
If there is a single element of the human condition that defines us and our existence above all else, it resides in the tension between our need for freedom and our need for belonging. To be human is to live with contradiction and opposing desires that so often seem at odds with one another.