Designing pieces that feel intentional without feeling precious
Designing pieces that feel intentional without feeling precious
September has a particular quality to it. The light shifts — not dramatically, but enough that you notice it at the kitchen table in the morning, or when you're folding something and set it down and the color just looks different than it did in July. There's a settling that happens this time of year, and I think it's one of the reasons I make what I make.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between something that feels intentional and something that feels precious. They can look similar from a distance, but they feel completely different to live with.
A precious thing makes you nervous. You treat it carefully not because you love it but because you're afraid of it — afraid of staining it, using it wrong, putting it somewhere it doesn't belong. I've owned things like that and they almost always end up in a drawer. They stop being part of your life and start being a responsibility.
An intentional thing is different. I noticed this first with a table runner I made a few years ago in a warm rust linen. I put it on my table — not for a dinner party, just a regular Tuesday — and it stayed there. It got crumbs on it. It got moved when my kids did homework. It got a small candle wax drip that I mostly got out. And none of that ruined it. If anything, it looked better with a little living in it. That's what I was going for, even if I couldn't have named it then.
I think intentional design, at least the kind I'm drawn to, is about making choices that hold up over time. Not choices that shout. A color that works in September's low light and still makes sense in March. A stitch or a weave that has some character to it — not because it's artsy, but because something made by hand carries the marks of being made by hand, and I think that's honest. I'd rather something look like what it is.
With the handbags especially, I think about how a bag actually moves through a day. It gets set on floors. It holds receipts and lip balm and sometimes a granola bar that's been in there too long. I want the bag to be good enough to be used without apology. There's something almost generous about that — a thing that asks nothing of you except to be carried.
The scarves are where I let myself play more, but even there I'm thinking about wearability. Can this go with the coat you already own? Can it be tied loosely without looking like you tried too hard? I care about that. I think beauty should be low-maintenance in the sense that it shouldn't require a performance to access it.
I was reading something recently — from Proverbs, actually — about how wisdom is found in the ordinary, in the day-to-day work of hands and home. I find that grounding. It reminds me that what I'm making doesn't need to be extraordinary. It just needs to be good and true and useful. That's enough of a goal.
There's a version of "handmade" that gets very precious about itself — the provenance, the process, the story behind every thread. I understand the impulse, but I want the thing I make to carry its own weight without me having to explain it. If I've done it right, you just feel it when you pick it up.
If any of this is sitting with you — maybe there's something in your home or your closet that you've been treating too carefully, or something you've been wanting that you keep talking yourself out of — I'd gently say: you probably already know what you're drawn to. That instinct is worth listening to. And if you want to see what I've been working on this fall, you're welcome to wander through the shop. Everything there was made to be used.
What's one thing in your home that you actually reach for every day — and what do you think makes you want to use it?
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