Books |
Wabi Inspirations
Axel Vervoordt
By
Published: Apr 02, 2014
Category:
Art and Photography
Beauty is a function of time and Nature.
You can buy something new and shiny and stamped with much-admired design and technology, but from this perspective, it doesn’t matter what you paid for it or how highly praised it is — it will never be beautiful.
Beauty, for Axel Vervoordt, means a piece of wood — an unfinished, probably rough piece of wood. A stone, smoothed by water. A clay pot that doesn’t suggest the date of its creation.
“Ever since I was a boy, I have been enthralled by the beauty found in nature’s artistry,” he writes. “My room was filed with little treasures I had lovingly collected, objets trouvé from the forests, fields or seas. So I have always been compelled by the belief that all beauty is imperfect, incomplete, and impermanent — as transitory as life itself.”
Wait. This cannot be. Axel Vervoordt is one of the world’s most celebrated interior designers and antique dealers. When last we saw him — in At Home with May and Axel Vervoordt: Recipes for Every Season — he and his wife lived in a 50 room castle near Antwerp. His clients include Sting, Pierre Bergé, Henry Kravis and Bill Gates. He has a staff of 85.
And yet, in “Wabi Inspirations,” Vervoordt preaches the gospel of Wabi-Sabi, an esthetic that evolved “out of the fundamental values prized by Zen monks who sought solace and contentment in simplicity, purity, restraint, and humility.” Vervoordt’s book, a collection of short essays and many photographs, printed on matte paper, is the kind of coffee table book that belongs on a table made from barn wood that’s several centuries old. [To buy it from Amazon, click here.]
Vervoordt’s book is beautiful, challenging and expensive. If you’re curious, you will also want — or, perhaps, only want — Leonard Koren’s 96-page book on the subject. “Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete,” he writes. “It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.” Koren’s book — a paperback, a work of clarity and brilliance, and an absolute bargain — is called “Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.” [To buy it from Amazon, click here.]
The mini-essays in Vervoordt’s book veer toward the precious and the personal, but that’s perhaps the core of the idea — a Wabi room is not only about what’s there and what isn’t, it’s about what you bring to it. If empty rooms make you uneasy, this idea is not for you; if silence is your enemy, flee. Ditto if you resist “peeling paint, bare boards, walls stripped back to plaster and earth.” In Wabi space and time, there is always something to see, you just have to be willing to be with it and look inward.
Vervoordt tells the story of an ancient pergola overlooking a lake. He thought he should redesign it “so the seating area and the lake feel more connected.” He wanted to minimize the environmental impact of any change, so he asked an expert on Japanese Zen gardens for advice. Months passed. At last the master offered advice: “Take your chair and move it closer to the water.”
I love that story. And although the photographs in “Wabi Inspiration” are mostly dark and brown, it is an experience to turn the pages. Here is Vervoordt’s home in an old industrial complex, his son’s apartment in a restored Renaissance building, a Japanese house that was home to artist Jiro Yoshihara, an ancient barn painstakingly moved from Japan to Belgium. And much from Vervoordt’s frequent collaborator, Japanese architect Tatsuro Miki.
Special? Very. Only a few coffee tables will crave this book. But they will crave it a lot.
