Marcus Sly - Furniture Making and Design

It's intriguing how profoundly we are intertwined - emotionally, physically, spiritually -  with the spaces which we move through and inhabit. In 'The Eyes of the Skin' Juhani Pallasmaa¹ writes that:

an architectural space frames, halts, strengthens and focuses our thoughts, and prevents them from getting lost.  We can dream and sense our being outdoors, but we need the architectural geometry of a room to think clearly.  The geometry of thought echoes the geometry of the room.

In a very real sense, the objects we use and are surrounded by not only reflect us, but create us.   I think that if we are at all involved in making things for ourselves or others this is worth thinking on.  Can we produce things which have the potential to become a valued part of a person's inner as well as outer world?  And what might that mean in practice?

Just to be asking ourselves these questions may involve a shift in our approach.  It might lessen our preoccupation with "originality", "form" and "self expression", and give us clues about where a deeper meaning in our work could lie - within which originality, form and self expression can find their own, unforced place.

¹ Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin, Wiley, 2005