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Turning to Turin

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It had been becoming obvious for some time that a dose of Italia was needed, our last visit having been to Bologna, too long ago in 2018. It was tempting to return to a city we like a lot, but in the end, we decided to tread new streets.

Liking to pose pointless philosophical questions to myself, I pondered what is the ‘right’ way to approach a city like Turin. The fourth largest in Italy unsurprisingly has huge numbers of galleries and museums, but I’m afraid that isn’t really why we go. Had the opera season been underway, we might have indulged – but it wasn’t. And as a geographer, I am much more interested in the lived culture and character of the present-day city than paying homage to the dusty stuff in the museums.

In many ways we use ‘Italy’ as a template for our own lives – for approaches to food, clothing, home furnishings – and (when possible) la dolce vita in general. Indeed, for this blog too. But of course, this is all a conceit, even if a harmless (and hopefully even healthy) one, more about our perception of a country than the current state of the real place. Hence the need for a reality-check from time to time.

Thus, we stayed in a self-catering apartment in the centre, albeit furnished in our preferred modern minimalist style rather than anything more traditional. Much of our visit was spent in flânerie, during which we covered most of the central area, enough to gain a sense of the atmosphere of the place, sitting in the bars and cafes (once we had found them), watching the locals. And in this, some of our preconceptions were shaken. Sadly(?) Italy seems to be following the rest of the wealthy world down the same mass-produced anywheresville of high commerce and prepackaged – well – everything.

That’s not to say there is nothing worth seeing; far from it. The architecture is grand, the piazzas expansive. The Mole Antonelliana (top) is just ugly. The French and Savoy influences are clearly there, so there is perhaps less of the sheer exuberance of much of the rest of Italy. That we had expected; the globalisation less so.

The arcaded streets and many small shops typical of Italian towns are also still there, but the big international brands (of which quite a few, I suppose, are Italian in any case) are certainly making their presence very known, as are fast-food style eateries, many of which now look like chains even when they are not. It was hardly wall-to-wall McDonalds; what seems to be happening is that Italian food is moving with the times and promoting itself in a brasher, more commercial way. Pizzerias are everywhere and seemed to be the food of choice. There are also a lot of focaccerie, also in plenty of cases modelling themselves on fast-food joints, even if the products were completely Italian and far-removed from what you would probably find elsewhere.

But we had to work hard to find anywhere serving traditional pasta dishes, or the traditional primi/secondi/dolci menu. In desperation, on the second night, after trudging much of the centre for somewhere that felt right, we settled for one of the more modern restaurants – and ended up with probably the worst meal we have ever eaten in Italy, from which we quickly fled. Maybe it is reassuring that even Italians can mess up a bowl of spaghetti with poor ingredients and inadequate cooking – but it is disappointing if hitherto universal skills are becoming no longer quite so universal.

It is sometimes difficult to figure out what is going on: another issue was the lack of vegetarian dishes for my wife, not normally a problem in Italy. Is that because Piedmontese food traditionally is meat-heavy? (Yes, to some extent) – or is it more evidence that Italian tastes are changing? The longest queues we saw were outside a new burger bar. This, we should not forget, is the wealthy industrial core of Italy, where more internationalisation is probably to be expected. From recollection, Milan is even more like it.

I suppose this is just the latest evolution of the national style: there is of course no reason why Italy should preserve itself in a picturesque bubble just for the sake of the tourists. The same global forces are at work everywhere, and they are bound to have an impact. I can’t say that I noticed widespread displays of the famed Italian dress-sense either, though to be fair, things picked up a bit on the Monday as the working week began. But for the weekend, jeans, tee-shirts and trainers seemed to rule.

I bought a jacket in the end-of-summer sales, from a branch of a well-recognised and long-established Neapolitan tailor. Perhaps the low price should have been a clue: despite acceptable Italian colour and styling…. Made in China. Still, a frustrating reminder that in their homeland, nicely Italian-styled clothes do not need to cost the fortune they do when purchased in another country. The underlying aesthetic is still there; I could have bought much of the shop. But “authentically Italian”? Not entirely.

To be fair, most people still looked neat – one does not see the downright shabbiness that is the norm of much of the British population, and people still seem to take some pride in grooming well. They also still seem to exercise restraint in the way they behave in public: we saw none of the carnage of evenings in British towns, partly perhaps because people of all generations are still out in the warm September weather.

In some ways, the bus ride from the airport is more informative: this is where you see the city that most of its residents actually inhabit. Outside the centre, large blocks of flats and wide traffic-clogged streets were the norm, and it’s difficult to see whether the local shops and neighbourhood facilities are still there, tucked away out of sight. I hope they are. But Italy too is embracing electric buses, cycleways and multi-way recycling bins. More trees are being planted. Does it still look Italian? Well, yes it does – there is no doubt that a strong national identity is being stamped on all these aspects of modernity. And for all its ancientness, Italy has always embraced the future, albeit of an eccentric kind; perhaps more so than Britain. Another contradiction, since both countries are generally socially conservative – but it is Italy that seems more go-ahead at the moment.

After our dismal meal on the second evening, things improved substantially. I will cover the following day’s trip to Genoa in a separate post, but we also managed to find a small caffè for breakfast, the very epitome of what such a place ‘should’ be, run by an elderly couple and just a short distance from our flat, in a direction that had previously not looked particularly promising. Perfect cappuccino (with a small glass of water) and filled crescante, while the old gents of the district took their espressi standing at the bar, chatting loudly. On our second visit, senora, clearly pleased by our return, brought out some complimentary biscotti….

And just round the corner, also somewhat off the main drag, was the Piazza Carlo Emmanuelle II, which turned out to be a well-patronised dining location, including a restaurant where we had perhaps one of the best meals we have ever eaten in Italy. It can still be done: albeit not at ‘high street’ prices but certainly excellent value compared with the U.K.

Sunday was spent following up a few remaining areas, including the promenade and park along the Po, which seemed another popular spot for hanging out in the late-summer heat.

I don’t want to give the impression that Turin is not worth a visit; it certainly is – though it is probably not going to make my must-return-soon list. Part of the reality check involves precisely the process of adjusting one’s impressions to the actuality of the real place. For all our template, we are fully interested in knowing how the real Italy is. Otherwise, it would just be a condescending, picturesque tourist stereotype.

The ways in which traditional cultures are adapting and evolving in the modern era is fascinating. As internationalisation reaches everywhere, some of the old, appealing things are being lost, but others are not. In some ways, it is internationalisation that is adapting instead. There is a strange collision going on between the totally international (including the fact that we can eat better pasta in the U.K. than in a certain restaurant in Turin…) and the still-local. People mostly drive the same cars everywhere. The airport bus was provided by Arriva, a company headquartered in Sunderland. We can pay contactlessly now, and tap in and out on the trains, just as at home. WhatsApp looks just the same on an Italian phone. But I wonder if the conversations are different, still more traditionally Italian.

The quirky trains of my earlier visits now sit rusting in the sidings (as did their predecessors in their time); Trenitalia is now a modern (mostly) reliable operation much like those elsewhere in Europe; indeed, the trains are often the same. On the railways – and everywhere else – almost all announcements and signs are now in English as well as Italian, even if often digitised.  Most of the people we interacted with had at least a little English (though we persevered with our limited Italian, as we should…)

I suspect that most Italians are still as sentimental about their country as ever. But they are probably not sentimental about the same Italy as the likes of us, and the hordes of tourists who file dutifully through the historic centres and major museums. A little research provided the thought that (world-wide) most museums are visited more by tourists than by locals. Meanwhile, real life in Italy is in many ways an entirely different thing, probably at least as full of frustrations and contradictions as ever it was. Or maybe that is changing too?

Perhaps more intriguing (and confusing) in Italy than in other places, is the difference between the ‘seen’ country and the social/economic/psychological landscape that in one sense is there in plain sight animating the actions of the locals one encounters and the development of their cities, but still fundamentally invisible to few-day visitors.

It is a major factor to understanding the place, and why even one of the most distinctive countries in Europe may be choosing (or at least allowing itself) to go down the path of internationalisation. For us, being provoked, however uncomfortably, into reflecting on these things hopefully creates a different understanding of the country from following the over-trodden culture-vulture tourist trails.

Sartoria

There is no such thing as a work-shirt.

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The Irish, it has to be said, will probably never win prizes for being the best-dressed people in Europe. I think I can say that fairly, coming from the neighbouring country where, these days, the same is certainly true. (To my mind, it is obvious who the runaway winners are…)

To be fair, when in Ireland I tend to head out to the rural west, and it is a good while since I was in central Dublin where a more urbane disposition might perhaps be expected. But as with many aspects of Ireland in the quarter-century that I have been visiting regularly, things have moved apace.

So I hope that the owner of Vestiti will not take affront at the above comments, for he is doing a good bit to bring more elegance to not only his homeland but also the rest of these islands. No surprise, though, that through his wife’s family, Jon Carmody has connections in the Italian clothing industry, and he has been able to source excellent quality shirts for his e-business and his one current connected shop outlet in Dublin.

I happened on Vestiti shirts purely through its social media presence, and it was immediately clear to me that here was excellent tailoring at a reasonable price: hardly cheap but certainly nowhere near the figures being asked for comparable items by the big Italian names. The high thread count is there, as is excellent stitching, and give-away details such as generous tails and the lowest buttonhole being placed horizontally as an anchor.

What’s more, Jon has been able to adapt the cut of his shirts to suit his home market, away from the ultra-slim offerings that have dominated in recent years – but which are of no use whatsoever to those of us who are not ourselves of an ultra-slim cut. But the cutaway collars, which for me are the epitome of Italian shirt style, are still there.

In a sense, I regret the need of those of us who live and dress in other countries to refer back to the “one true source” of really great modern clothing; it ought to be possible for others to develop their own styles too. There have, of course, been designers from other countries, including Britain and Ireland. But I suppose the Italian benchmark is so well established that it is inevitable that that is where we will look, and in my opinion (being just back from Italy) even today, nobody does it better. That said, it is good to see a small entrepreneur taking the inspiration and offering it more widely – and I have remarked before that, for all its negative impacts, e-commerce does allow one to support worthy small businesses without requiring geographical proximity.

Jon’s business still seems to be developing; his prices have crept up in recent months, but for the quality, they are still competitive.The shirts come well-presented, as one would expect for a high-quality item.

I will close by saying that I have no personal stake in Vestiti; I just so happen to have been one of Jon’s early customers, have had several excellent items from him, and a degree of subsequent correspondence following my feedback. However I am happy to do what I can to support wider knowledge of an excellent small supplier. Having just retired, it might seem I have no great need any longer for “work” shirts. But, as Jon agreed, there are only good and bad shirts, so I shall continue wearing these good ones, even if not in the workplace!

Disclosure: Jon has offered me an ongoing price reduction for personal use, and he is happy to offer a similar 15% reduction for first purchases made as a result of this review.  

The Vestiti website can be found here and the following discount code may be used: SPREZZATURA

This image from Vestiti website.

Food, Opinion & Thought

Mr Hanna’s

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Localism seems to have got itself a bad name. The Fifteen-Minute City is a concept that has been known to us geographers for a long time, albeit not with that name. It is a model for making communities that are sustainable in both human and environmental terms – and hopefully economic ones too.

Yet the phrase seems to have been grasped, without comprehension, by certain groups as a conspiracy theory for total control of people’s movements. In reality, all it describes is the ability of people to access the services they need, ideally on foot, within fifteen minutes of their home.

The concept was there, if not the phrase, when my wife and I moved to the small town of Coggeshall in north Essex, U.K. in 2002.

It is a small town of around 4000 people, in a rural setting about 45 miles north-east of London. While many people who come here (often from London) seem to be seeking a rural idyll, Coggeshall is more than that; it has a history going back to Roman times and a market charter dating from 1256. It has a more recent history as an industrial centre for the textile industry. I had known it since the mid-1980s, and when we moved here, we were attracted to precisely the urbanism of a small, relatively sustainable centre, where we can indeed access pretty much everything we need on a daily basis, within considerably less than a fifteen-minute walk. With many listed buildings, it does sometimes feel like a time-warp, but Coggeshall has not been immune to the various pressures of modern times. Its retail offering is still impressive for a place of its size, when many others in the region have few or no shops at all. But when a new local supermarket opened at a distance from the centre around ten years ago, the impact on footfall in the centre was immediate. Numerous shops have struggled to survive ever since.

Which is why the latest opening is so important: fully in the spirit of the fifteen-minute neighbourhood, Joe Hanna and his partner Harry, have opened a new café. Not exactly news of global significance, but within one week, their premises has brought back all the life to the centre of our small town.

We should not ignore the impact of a pre-existing tea-room, which has been making headway since Lockdown, but the new premises are perfectly attuned to the needs to the hitherto-urban population now living in our small town, and has added significantly to the critical mass of attractive eating and drinking places in the centre – enough to draw people back. And while the current addition of a considerable amount of new housing has caused much heartache, perhaps a benefit will be a larger local market to sustain such services.

Joe and Harry seem to have an unerring eye for detail and atmosphere – in all the ways that so many cafes in the U.K. disappoint, this one doesn’t. They have taken well-observed inspiration from café culture in France and Italy; they have taken care to provide high-quality products, rather than the usual disappointing clones that even many independents now purvey. They have resisted the trend to base the design and décor on the chains, preferring instead the full continental-café vibe. They have bothered to secure an alcohol and music licence, and permission for pavement seating, and are offering open-all-hours availability which, if it doesn’t kill them, means we in Coggeshall now have somewhere we can go at pretty much any time of the week. It all works magnificently.

Mr Hanna’s has only been open for a week, although it feels much longer than that in the way it has already bedded in. Already, they have been cleaned out of stock several times, and the queue has almost permanently been out of the door. Time will no doubt improve the slickness of the waiting, not that it is by any means bad.

Hanna’s is an excellent summertime hangout – but it promises to be equally good as the days draw in. By showing real verve and not cutting the often-cut corners, Mr Hanna’s offers a model for what can be achieved even in a small community like ours. Too often, it is precisely the cutting of corners that results in a lacklustre offering that disappoints, and which people soon grow tired of.

Amenities in small communities have been under assault for so long in the U.K. that it feels like the natural way of things. But it need not be so. Given something really appealing, people will still use their local services – and I think they actually prefer that to the anonymity of the huge chains and retail parks. Offering something inspirational is what makes all the difference.

There is nothing to fear from fifteen-minute communities, indeed quite the opposite.

Opinion & Thought, Politics and current affairs

We don’t think the way we think we think…

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This is the first of two reviews of two recently-published books on the nature of human thought and behaviour.

An ‘interesting’ little ruck on Facebook recently illustrated very nicely why this is an important book:

Having finished reading it recently the timing could not have been more perfect.

The ruck arose around the ‘Landlord Investment Show’ in London, which was recently invaded and brought to a halt by a tenant organisation called Acorn. A clip of the proceedings was posted by an organisation called TitleSplit, whose strapline reads, “Helping property developers escape a saturated market, while doubling the value of their portfolio.”

Not exactly in keeping with their claim that landlords are a social good.

The presenters appeared totally uncomprehending of the reason for the invasion. The fact that there might have been “reasons” why tenants felt the need to invade a landlord investment show did not appear to register. They went on to explain what a hard life landlords have these days and how it is not fair that they are taxed quite heavily. According to one of the presenters, “if it was not for us landlords, these people would have nowhere to live”.

Awareness of the destructive effect that opportunisitic private landlords, their rent hikes, abstraction of public money, no-fault evictions and buy-to-let activities have had on British social fabric was conspicuously absent; more informative was the barely-suppressed revulsion with which they reacted to the invasion of their show by the tenant group.

A torrent of protest duly landed on the post’s comment thread, together with a few in defence of landlords, along the lines of “that’s just how it is” and “the politics of envy”. Very few of the defenders made a serious attempt to answer the comments of their critics. And thus it has ever been.

This is why Turi Munthe’s book Why We Think What We Think is important. Munthe has an adequate but not outstanding written style, and the first part of the book duly trots through the possible the reasons why people think what they do; he advances the idea that it is less to do with free will (as we like to think) and more to do with both environmental and social factors that bear on us, even below the level of conscious awareness. There are some interesting nuggets, such as the correlation of county-scale American electoral outcomes and soil types. (Apparently, differing agricultural systems tend to produce varying levels of wellbeing, which in turn influence whether people end up being conservative (because they are secure) or radical (because they are not). And then it transmits down the generations, showing up as spatially-evident electoral anomalies.

Munthe also proposes that physically attractive people politically tend to the Right because they generally are treated better by others and thereby have more stable, successful lives. There is fact, he claims, behind the idea that the Beautiful People tend to be pro-establishment. But they also become more risk-averse because they have more to lose… Hence, those who argue for the status quo tend both to have done better from it but are also more fearful of change; cue their inherent conservatism.

All this is interesting, if only partly convincing. The quality of Munthe’s supporting argument and evidence is a little patchy, and I found myself not always convinced by the too-simple causality being claimed. There is some interesting discussion of the possible influence of genetics on people’s worldview, though he is balanced enough to accept that environment is a very important factor too.

It is in the second part of the book where the real value lies. Having argued that the differences between people and groups may go deeper than we like to think, Munthe goes on to discuss what can be done about it: a very relevant topic given the level of discord in current society. As witnessed by the episode mentioned at the top of this piece, people’s worldviews (and the assumptions behind them) seem to run deeper than they can really control.

In simple terms, Munthe argues that individual human reasoning is not as powerful as we choose to believe; he suggests that confirmation bias shows that individual thought is more a matter of self-justification than a real attempt to arrive at an objective truth. Even as a trained critical thinker, I find myself forced to accept that this is a strong possibility: truly objective thought is an extremely difficult thing. This need not be a problem, so long as we accept that fact, and understand that our worldview is more about justifying and explaining our personal experiences of life than any genuinely objective position.

But most powerfully, Munthe argues that the true strength of human reasoning only comes when one engages in it collectively: that the existence of an implacable opposition is an essential thing for human progress and achievement – be that for the playing of a football match or the process of academic peer review. It is only collectively that humans do their best thinking – and innovating.

He cautions, however, that one should not expect victory – the whole point is the unending tension between implacably opposed worldviews, whose basis may lie deep in our formative and ancestral experiences. He argues that conservatives and progressives do quite literally inhabit somewhat different realities, that it is not possible for one side to be ‘right’ and that in effect, the two groups can’t help themselves.

Munthe says that accepting this reality is probably the best we can do in terms of defusing the increasingly confrontational nature of society. Accepting that we need our opponents – and they need us – and that disagreement is part of a greater purpose – may be the most important contribution of this book. I think it should be recommended reading for all those who engage in culture wars on social media or elsewhere.

Since reading Munthe’s book, I became involved in a local social media discussion about the “threat” presented by groups of men from a nearby asylum-seekers’ accommodation centre. It rapidly became apparent that I was wasting my time trying to advance an alternative to the fearful, right-wing inspired local view. People seemed unable to accept that there even is another perspective on such issues (whether they agreed or not), and sadly they became abusive rather than concede even a politely-argued point contrary to their position.

I don’t know what the solution to such entrenched thinking is: if people can’t even accept that there is a legitimate alternative view, even if they don’t agree with it, then we are in a difficult place. I don’t think social media are the root of the problem; while they undoubtedly make views more public and perhaps more extreme, I suspect the views have actually been there all along, just more privately – in this case, a relatively small, inward-looking community being faced with an influx of outsiders. It’s the same with the double-think between landlords and tenants – particularly the way in which rental property-owners dehumanise the human cost of their activities with talk of “investment opportunities” and “returns on their investments”. Rarely talk of tenants as people, let alone needy ones.

How much can rational thought help address such issues? Maybe not as much as we think – unless we are prepared at least to accept the existence of our opponents, and engage with their thinking. It might help if all sides would read and consider the wisdom of Munthe’s book – but when the definition of balkanised thinking is having a closed mind, I suspect that those who would most benefit from it probably would rather die than do so.

Travel

Achill

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Islands seem to encourage a sense of intrigue. Maybe they do it on purpose as a means of overcoming their inherent inaccessibility, so as to attract people. Historically, they have provided easily defended sites for communities, but it came at the cost of marginality and being generally behind the times. Literally insular.

Our latest annual visit to County Mayo in north-west Ireland resolved our absence from one of the outstanding local examples: Achill Island is the largest island on the west coast of Ireland, though in reality it is an island by no more than a couple of hundred metres, being separated from the mainland by a narrow sound which has been bridged since the late 1800s. However, it still entails a longish drive down a dead-end road to what is one of the most westerly points in Ireland (and hence Europe), so one has a good sense of heading to the end of the earth while making the journey.

There seems to be a significant mystique built up around the place, which perhaps explains why Mayo residents urge you to visit. And, as we found, with good reason. The island’s reputation is as a wild and windswept place, but our visit in May was blessed with great weather, and at a time when the rhododendrons were at their best. Invasive weeds they may be, but the display is still spectacular. These and New Zealand flax seem to thrive in the wilder parts of Mayo, and they lend a slightly exotic feel to the landscape.

Tourism is well-established, and as seems to be the norm in Ireland, even the remotest places are well cared for and provided with far better amenities than many of their equivalents in Scotland or Wales. I suspect this says something about the benefits of home rule, with the government in Dublin setting greater store by sustaining its nation’s remote communities than its distant equivalent in London ever did (at least before devolution took place).

The island’s population is about 2,500, or half that of the small town where we live in South-East England. While there are Gaeltacht areas (native Irish speaking), most of the island is English-speaking, and seems to have a track-record of attracting artists, musicians and filmmakers. Graham Greene wrote parts of several of his novels while staying on the island.

One might expect fishing to have been a dominant industry, but there seem to be few places where building harbours was possible. Much of the coastline consists of steep cliffs or wide beaches, such as the renowned one at Keel (above). However, the island was known for nearly exterminating its population of basking sharks in the quest for shark liver oil. They have, however, returned, and a large number were spotted in Keem Bay (below) just ten or so days after our visit.

Keem Bay

When the weather is good, places such as Achill Island offer a beautiful, laid-back retreat even when compared with the generally slow pace of life in most of Ireland. We had a lovely day there – and the Beehive Coffee Shop and Crafts Centre passed our cappuccino (and food) test with flying colours. Having seen pictures of the island during more normal conditions, though, I’m glad we made our visit when the weather was kind. It’s easy to romanticise such places when one only sees their gentle face…

Food, Travel

When in Cambridge….

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An impromptu book-buying raid to Cambridge is always a welcome thing – all the more so on a Monday, something we are still getting used to, having cut down our working week. And it’s better still with the sure knowledge that there will be a good lunch attached.

Our default pitstop in Cambridge is Aromi, in Bene’t Street just round the corner from the market square.  Having spent good time in that country over the years, the feel of a proper Italian eatery is something you just absorb – and when you find the same thing – the proper thing – somewhere else, a light of recognition goes on in the head.

So it is with Aromi, first opened in 2013 by the younger generation of a Sicilian family, and now extending to three outlets across the city. This is not pretentious or themed food; the place is fairly unprepossessing, but everything is right. Its only drawback, in summer and weekends at least, is the lengthy queue. But it is worth it: as soon as you see the counter display with rows of pizza and focaccia slices displayed like no dull chain will ever master, the range of dolci and the brands of Italian coffees you know this place hits the mark.

Service is brisk but generally good humoured, as it probably needs to be given the rather cramped seating area. But again, as with all such places, the inconveniences are part of the character. And the flavours justify all.

Twenty years ago, Cambridge was curiously under-served by eateries, but as with many places, the intervening period has witnessed an explosion of places to eat – but sadly, mostly of the chain variety (with some honourable exceptions), and there is a good choice of street food in the market. Against this, Aromi still manages to be over-subscribed.

I believe that ‘quality will out’; that if you give people good choices, they will respond. Just opposite the original branch of Aromi is a branch of one of the ‘Italian’ chains. I have no idea why they thought this would be a good place to open, and I don’t think I have ever seen anyone going in. And why would they, given the much superior offering just a few paces away? Jamie Olivier also used to have an Italian restaurant just down the street, but that went some years ago too.

Meanwhile, Aromi has opened another café across the city, and just around the corner from ‘our’ branch, there is now a takeaway kiosk where they are selling excellent gelato and fresh pasta.

If there’s anywhere in provincial Britain where such a venture can succeed, it is probably Cambridge, which always feels as though it is one of the few British cities that can come close to the continental vibe – helped of course by a cosmopolitan mix of students, academics and tourists. The temptation is to wish that Aromi might spread its wings and start catering for a wider geographical area (one nearer our home would be a good start) – but I guess that is precisely where the rot tends to set in, once a unique venue becomes a chain. Better to keep it small and cramped, the food of a great quality – and a treat for the times when those Cambridge raids are on the cards.

The views in this review are entirely independent.

Arts, Architecture & Design

The Wow Factor

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‘Stunning’ is a much-overused word these days – but there are some occasions where it is warranted.

Continuing my updates on design items that I consider special, Frisbi has been – literally and figuratively – a brilliant addition to our home.

This light was designed in 1978 by architect Achille Castiglione for Flos, and I first saw it some thirty years ago in a book of contemporary design by Jonathan Glancy. I was immediately struck by the way the disc appears to hover in the air beneath the highly-polished dome, and it stuck in the mind ever since. Frisbi has thus been on the to-own list for a long while, during which I am not certain that I ever saw an example ‘in the flesh’.

I had been feeling for some time that our dining area lacked presence; the table sat at one end of our main living space, but it felt unanchored. The only lighting came from ceiling-mounted spots some 3m above, which just gave overall, rather flat illumination

The decision was taken to make more emphatic use of the area, partially through the use of an over-table light; I have always felt that the dining table should be a cockpit of social interaction, and providing a strong pool of light is a way to encourage this. Thoughts once again turned to Frisbi; the plunge with an unseen item was taken, and an order duly placed as part of a general lighting redesign of the room.

As so often, the light arrived as a set of self-assembly parts, solidly packed. It initially seemed huge.  Fun ensued with the various cables, but with the help of our electrician, it was not a difficult task to install the light.

And suddenly those parts transformed into something with a real ‘wow’ factor. The effect is indeed stunning, with the support cables for the disc almost invisible from many angles. The piece sits motionless and with real presence, a combination of refined surfaces and barely-there cable creating a sculpture in the air. With the light positioned about a metre above the table, the more intimate setting desired has been well-created, and Frisbi has become one of the most commented-on items in the room.

The 1970s were a strange decade for design; much of its output looks decidedly dated now, but Frisbi has managed to avoid that – it looks perfectly contemporary and shows that great design really does stand the test of time. I am very pleased to own a piece by one of the masters of Italian design. The fact that the light immediately felt as though it had ‘always been there’ is the best testament to a truly stunning piece.

Opinion & Thought, Sartoria

The Curator

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When I was about ten years old, like several of my friends, I had a stamp collection. It proved to be a transient interest, and I never did progress to being a fully-fledged philatelist. Dusty stamps were soon replaced by the collecting of numbers of (equally dusty) 1970s diesel railway locomotives. Even though I didn’t realise it at the time, I witnessed the protracted swansong of traditional steam-era railway infrastructure in the U.K. before it was massively transformed into the modern system we have today.

In their time, locomotive numbers were replaced by LPs, then CDs. The latter collection still exists; I haven’t gone the digital route, in part because my obscure tastes don’t always make it to the big digital download stations, and partly because I still like to have a tangible manifestation of my listening.

All that said, I have never really considered myself an avid collector of anything – if nothing else, I am not a great fan of massive accumulations of stuff, especially non-productive stuff. But somewhere in the mix, it also needs to be acknowledged that the urge to collect does seem to run quite deep in the human psyche. Maybe it is nothing more than a primitive urge to hoard the provisions needed for survival…?

But I feel more at home with the word curation – which, although it has overtones of the rarified atmosphere of fine art connoisseurs, recently seems to have gained wider currency. Perhaps there is something more intentional about curating, rather than simply accumulating that which happens to become available. Maybe the word also implies a sense of restraint, as in knowing when to stop – whereas the only thing to do to remain a collector is to carry on collecting ad infinitum…. Perhaps there is also an overtone of caring for one’s items, which again seems a little more productive than just archiving them.

And so, the word seems to have gained traction for me with respect to three things that, while hardly constituting collections, do seem to have value in the judicious assembly and management thereof:

  1. My wardrobe. I recently became aware that classic menswear is apparently having a moment, not that you would know from observing the average British street. I don’t collect clothes in the sense of wanting ever more – but there is something undeniably satisfying about assembling and then maintaining a meaningful and coherent wardrobe. This has become stronger as I have learned more about Italian tailoring which is my preferred style. It is perhaps easier for men, inasmuch as their classic style has a stronger code than the relative freeform of female scene, and thus it is perhaps a little easier to know what is needed. I will admit that opening a wardrobe to find a considered collection of appealing things to wear is very satisfying.  I have even learned to brush my shoes regularly.
  2. Our home. The great thing about modern interior design is its lack of constraint from traditional notions of what an interior requires: no three-piece suites here. There is far more freedom of form and composition possible with modern approaches. I bring the consideration of design to bear on any and everything our home needs: when one appreciates the way that good design can transform even mundane items into things of satisfaction, why would one not? So inadvertently, we seem to have created a small collection of modernist design with pieces from the 1930s to the present represented. People don’t seem to see anything odd in collecting antiques – but doing the same with modern pieces….?
  3. Our art works. That sounds terribly grand, but we are hardly in the league of collecting Picassos. What we have done is amass a small but pleasing selection of contemporary ceramics, mostly from makers in our region of eastern England, but also occasionally further afield. More recently, we have added a couple of original paintings. Viewed collectively, they add great visual richness to the experience of being in our home, to the extent that we sometimes have the pleasant sensation of living in a small art gallery.

None of which adds up to being avid collectors of anything – but somehow, the gentler sense of curating one’s possessions does enhance the process of owning things that we either need, or which more likely, just please us…

Opinion & Thought

Had

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I wish I did not keep getting a vague feeling of being had: of being short-changed by life in present-day Britain: of occasions where reasonable expectations are rarely met. While one might have to cut some slack for the longer-term effects of the pandemic, and social changes such as the shift of almost everything online, too often it feels as though the concept of fair value has disappeared.

I’ve just finished reading C. Thi Nguyen’s book The Score, which surely is a candidate for the geek-book of the year, but it nonetheless shines strong light on some relevant concepts. First amongst these is something I have long been preoccupied with, namely the way in which explicit targets corrupt genuine value. Nearly fifty years ago, the incoming Thatcher government would have had us believe that target-driven privatisation was going to provide wider choice and lower costs; half a century on, it is apparent that state monopolies have simply been replaced by even more powerful and insidious private ones, which now have virtually total control over the way markets, even countries, function.

Nguyen calls targets Metrics, by which he means the ways in which modern society has come to benchmark almost everything. He argues that the benefit of this comes from fungibility – in other words, the ability to quantify standards and procedures irrespective of which interchangeable human-being happens to be on shift today. And so, we get standardised products no matter who is frying the burgers. But he also argues that the downside of metrics is that they all-too-easily become targets in their own right, often behaving in perverse ways.

One of his most arresting examples is certain (presumably American) Law Schools, whose success metric bizarrely included the number of applications rejected – presumably in the interests of remaining exclusive. The outcome was an increase in offers made to patently unsuitable candidates, purely so that they could be rejected and the metric met.

I felt a surge of recognition at this story, as my own experience of the British education system over several decades was similar: since emphasis was placed on league tables and exam results, almost the entire education system has shifted from teaching subject matter for its own sake to teaching students explicitly how to pass exams (gaming the system might be a better description). Exams whose results are invalidated by the fact that they are all too often not supported by genuine student insight. From this emerges a mindset that cannot accept justified failure on the part of some as the price for genuine success by others – and along the way, both groups of students are sold short. Few teachers dare to swim against this tide; I was one of them, and I paid a heavy price for doing so.

But to return to my initial sense of being short-changed…

Metrics have the additional effect of measuring the measurable, rather than the valuable. And so the emphasis shifts away from what is truly of value towards that which can be measured. Everything is effectively dumbed down because simplistic things are most easily measured – for example, the amount of money a sales assistant took in their shift – but not the quality of service they provided, or the satisfaction the customer did or did not experience. And that’s where the feeling of having been had comes from.

I think this mindset has now infected almost every aspect of life in the U.K.  Somewhere in my residual awareness is a sense of a fair transaction; I accept that one cannot have something for nothing and I expect to pay a fair price for things I buy. In some cases, I am prepared to spend quite a lot, but I expect good quality of service and product in return.  Would that the other parties in such transactions still seemed to think the same thing. But fair service seems to have gone by the board; what matters to most commercial organisations is solely the metric that delivers the largest annual profit. From this perspective, the sole reason for the troublesome existence of The Customer is to feed the corporate bottom line. Whether they get good value for money – or even a fit-for-purpose product – is simply not an issue.

There is an aggregate effect here too: there seem to be two models for company profit: one sells disposable junk at a bargain basement price, while the other sells premium products to the vanishingly small percentage of the market for whom being fleeced is not a concern. And in some cases, the only difference seems to be the price of the twt….

 In between the two, those who are willing or able to pay moderate amounts for decent quality have been squeezed. The situation seems to have become more extreme as the income of the wealthy few has soared, and with it the prices of products that want to preserve their “exclusivity”, while I guess, if you are prepared to settle for cheap junk, you don’t care less in the first place. This is another manifestation of inequality, and it shows even in my local town. Home to around 200,000 people and relatively affluent, it is not a backwater – and yet its retail offering has been hollowed out so that it really only serves these two markets. Choice is an illusion, though to be honest, I doubt this is an issue that probably concerns the vast majority, for whom cheapness seems to be the only criterion in town.

It has been made worse by the widespread disappearance of local businesses, ones for whom good customer service and value were essential aspects of what they provided. A particular hurt has been the disappearance of the last specialist menswear shop in my town, which served me for thirty years with intermittent purchases of good quality clothing. I can hardly begrudge Duncan his retirement, but it has left a hole. There is now nowhere locally where I can buy any clothes that I am prepared to part with cash for.

In the search today for a new summer suit, I have instead been investigating one of the longer-lasting (now only) high street brands, which at least still seems to offer a reasonable selection. They even offer some suits made from good-quality Italian fabrics. On my first enquiry, we ascertained, however, that the cutting and stitching was nonetheless done in China to a British template, albeit apparently at a factory that did seem to know what it was doing. So not really an Italian suit at all. I went back for a second look today, and a different assistant assured me that beyond doubt the suits were manufactured in Italy. I did not push for a second look at the label: the “Made in Italy” label is not applied to anything lightly, and I knew it would not be there.

The question is, why would I spend money at a shop where either a) the company does not care about dissembling on the provenance of its clothes (the “Italian fabric” was writ large, while “made in China” was quite the opposite) and b) where the staff is either unknowledgeable or dishonest enough to tell a straight lie even to a customer who was proposing to spend a not inconsiderable sum?

A similar thing can be seen with food outlets; in theory, the increase in such places on the high street ought to be a cause for celebration – and we are still some way from the density of cafes and restaurants found in many continental places. But it is not – because they deal almost exclusively with food treated in the same way as junk clothes: a huge, spurious choice of various incarnations of mass-produced chain-food pap, and virtually nothing for those who want choose a different deal, who would – yes- be prepared to pay (an amount) more for something of genuine quality. That still tends to be the difference between British towns and their continental counterparts.

The answer, of course, is that 99% of the time, they get away with it. People who know or care about these things are so few and far between that we make next to no dent in the companies’ income whether we decide to buy or not. In the UK in particular, the mass market buys almost entirely on price, while what matters to those on the selling side is simply whatever ruse they can deploy to maximise their revenue; all else is irrelevant. Even, it seems to the point of not caring about those sectors of the market who want something else. It is a matter of put up or shut up. To avoid repetition, I will skip details of several other recent experiences; suffice it to say the above were not unique events.

There is, of course, an aggregate impact of all this: I am a strong proponent of local shopping. Town and city centres are essential parts of their communities and I would be very happy to purchase as much as possible in such places. And you can’t feel fabrics or taste food online. But what am I to do if my needs are increasingly ignored? If I am not able to spend my money on things I genuinely want, then I cannot – or will not – patronise such shops. I am not prepared to feel that I have been had. We are left with places that largely purvey junk – while those with the means and (maybe) the taste patronise somewhere else entirely.

I am then left with no alternative but to do the legwork virtually – and shop online, where at least I know that the sales assistant (me) will give the customer (also me) the care that his purchase deserves.

Arts, Architecture & Design, Opinion & Thought

Faking it.

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There are some things that are just a step (or two) too far. With a baseline price of over £5000 rising to over £10,000, the Barcelona Chair from Knoll falls firmly in that category. And from first-hand experience, it is not even very comfortable. (The angle formed between the back support and the base of the seat feels too small). A case of form before function? It would not be the first time that architect Mies van der Rohe fell foul of that criticism.

Yet I have always greatly appreciated this particular design, and you only live once… It is indeed an exquisite chair, with the elegant X-form to the legs, and the understated, seemingly-propped leather cushions. On the original, each square of leather was individually sown together, and then the piping was added. The process is almost entirely artisan, which no doubt does contribute to that price tag.

The Barcelona chair was designed in 1929 by Mies for Spanish royal visitors to the German pavilion at the Barcelona exposition of that year, and given recent changes to copyright laws, it will remain a restricted design in some places for some years to come. In theory, therefore cheap reproductions should not exist – especially as the law was tightened up in 2016.

But they do: a quick search online will show that it remains possible to buy reproductions at a fraction of the price of the licensed version, mostly made in China, and of very variable quality. We can be sure, for example, that those cushions will certainly not be made from individual squares of leather (the cheapest may not even be real leather at all…) – and I would not have a lot of faith in the quality of the welding either.

All of this presented me with a dilemma: I have always wanted to own a piece of this design, but shelling out such amounts for something that is not even comfortable was out of the question. So is it reasonable to buy one of the replicas? Not only are there the practical considerations, but also the ethical ones too.

On the one hand, I am not in favour of flouting laws (copyright or otherwise) when they happen not to suit you – but against that, one might also have reservations about the restrictive practices that keep the costs of the original so astronomical. Is there really any justification beyond a closed market for charging such figures for a design item whose designer died in 1969? And yes, I know the same argument might be applied to items like Rolexes and indeed fine art. Can one ever justify a copy?

So what to do? The reason it is even possible to manufacture replicas is that they are constructed in places where the original patents have already lapsed, or were never recognised in the first place – and they are normally sold as “in the style of” rather than originals. There seems to be little sign of a crackdown on such practices.

The design issues were solved by deciding to purchase the ottoman stool rather than the chair – the basic design style is the same – but without that awkward back angle. And an exhaustive search of potential suppliers led me to Iconic Interiors, based in Hull and led by Mark Holdsworth, who seems to be a genuine enthusiast for this furniture. He sourced his own version in China, but has taken great care not to compromise on the quality of the materials, the dimensions or anything else. The leather is top-grade aniline, though no doubt the individual squares are not there (if this matters…). The only significant omission is Mies’ signature stamped into the frame as is the case on the Knoll version. His Barcelona ottoman sells for about 20% of the price of the Knoll, which still makes it a more significant outlay than the really cheap copies. In its own right, it is a piece of good-quality furniture that so happens to replicate a classic design.

Mark’s items have been placed next to originals and found to be indistinguishable in quality by experts. And so, from the item that eventually arrived, it seems to be. Time will tell how it lasts, but first impressions are very good indeed.

In fact, this is not the first time we have taken this approach, as we have owned a replica Jacobsen Swan chair for some years now, also made in China, and bought from a now-forgotten company. However, once again, I refused to be seduced by the lowest price, and ended up with an item that seems to be standing the test of time well enough, even if the fabric used is not, I suspect, quite as durable as an original.

When it comes to “original”, the mark with modern classics of this sort is a piece either made continuously by the company that made the original (it does not have to be old) – or more contentiously, by the company that bought the original licence – as is the case with Knoll and the Barcelona chair. In the same room, we have an original Eileen Grey side table – and it has to be said that no difference in quality is discernible between that item and the two reproductions.

Does it make a difference in one’s mind? Well yes, of course, the knowledge is always there that one owns a replica – but what constitutes ‘original’ and ‘replica’ is complex. Knoll only acquired the license in 1964, and the name “Barcelona” came even later. So Knoll did not manufacture the 1929 originals, so in some sense, their model is no more ‘original’ than any other.

For those of us without infinitely elastic budgets, the choice is between owing a replica or nothing at all. When it comes to fine art, not everyone can own an original Picasso – but that has not stopped countless prints being sold, entirely acceptably, to those who appreciate such things; nobody objects on licensing grounds, to different orchestras performing the works of the great composers. I don’t really see why furniture should be so different. In that light, I don’t regret the choices we made here; the key has been to remain as faithful to the originals as possible and not dilute the designs for the sake of cheapness.

They still add a great deal to the rooms where they stand. Democratic Design says amen to that.