I find myself lifting the cup and my little finger goes up
it just goes up unconsciously, and I think: is it just counter balancing the weight, or is it inherited fussiness?
My granny might have done that. Not my mum though. She was a sculptor. Her hands were really strong, and she wasn’t someone that was terribly fussed about finesse. She was more like: shove it here, grab that, you know: here’s your mug of tea. Actually, though my mom really liked bone china, I’ve inherited that.
How do you like your tea?
How much do we really know about the personal preferences of our friends and family?
We might ask ” How do you like your tea? (milk/sugar/strong/weak).
But do we ever ask what would you like to drink your tea in?
Mug or cup? Large or small ? China or stoneware? Patterned or plain? Colour?
A bookcase is often used as way to describe how our memories are stored, and in dementia how different types of memories are lost, and others retained. The narrative and factual memories being at the top, and the emotional memories at the bottom. The artist Nathalie Elemento explains her piece Delivrer as an exploration of the process involved in retrieving memories :”memory : the core, the form, the format (or formatting) that we are all required to undergo so that we can better re-transcribe or retransform it. Like immense receptacle libraries, we accumulate that is cultural, emotional, familial, political, that we then have to re-organise. Delivrer can be read not as a box of secrets but as an object to help us remember”. Perhaps three dimensional structures like this can be personalised to create ‘reminders’ of precious memories.
Asking people to select colours from a simple set of flat mat cards is one way to provoke conversations about visual aesthetic preferences.
But a common response is that it depends not only on the context. but the scale and the material.
Fabric constructed from multiple fibres like velvet or carpet surfaces create multiple facets that create variation and gradations of tone in one colour.
Making these colour choices into three dimensional faceted surfaces is one way to convey this experience.
Charlotte Perriand‘s designs for storage offer a variety of contained spaces with sliding doors that can conceal or reveal the contents. Ingenious discrete lighting systems that can highlight the contents of individual sections offer the potential for interaction and variety. What you choose to keep in view and what you choose to keep hidden could change from day to day or at different times of the day. The structure provides containers that keep different items separate and easier to locate. People living with dementia have described being unaware of the contents of cupboards, that what is out of sight becomes literally out of mind. Could the lighting and the colour of these sliding doors provoke interaction?
Aurelie Hoegy‘s performances, films and installations explore the more eccentric aspects of our behaviour : ” Behind the veneer of normality every person has a mysterious side that is waiting to surface. Everyone is full of life, passion and madness, visible or suppressed” . Her drawing illustrates her proposal for lamp with a 50 metre cable – an apt way to visualise the the inconvenience of everyday life.
For many of us most parts of our everyday lives involves shared space. Outdoors, travelling, at work, at home, at school, at uni. How much does personal space matter? How do different people personalise whatever space they have. How permanent or transient is it?
I have moved from my home 200 miles a way. I chose the colour scheme when I refurbished the kitchen (left). I am now housesitting, living amongst the owners posessions, a tasteful neutral pallete. An old friend visiting, was prompted to buy me this mug that somehow encapsulates my personal preferences into one everyday object.
I know what I like