No Accounting For Taste
Some design trends which make perfect sense and become classics (blue and white, for instance, or Tolix chairs*). Others which are everywhere for a while, but look great despite their ubiquity, leaving me wishing I’d thought of it before (currently maps and globes). And some that are initially distracting, but better left in magazines** (Keep Calm posters, bell jars, walls of plates). At least when you live in my apartment.
But there are some fashions in what people put in their houses which I just don’t understand. Leaving aside the slippery slope of taste, money, too much gold*** and far too much clutter, the latest idea that mystifies me is abacuses. One was a curiosity, two was unexpected, but three threatens to be the start of an avalanche.
There are lots of old, formerly or barely still functional things that I think can look great as decoration. Vintage typewriters. Old suitcases. Telescopes. Heaps of things. But I don’t understand why anybody would want an abacus. Even if it was an ancient Incan artifact, you’d have to think the Incans might have had something a bit more enjoyable that could have been chosen instead. Perhaps it’s that I like my home to be relaxing, and the associations with numbers just don’t seem to be...
Other sorts of functional things are a vague association with trips to be taken, novels to be written, thought to be thought, and the interesting lives that the items have been through. Abacuses just seem like a bit too much of a reminder of bank statements to be checked, bills to be filed, things to be measured and organised.
Just because it's the end of financial year doesn't mean you have to take it home with you, after all...
This might be taking the idea of counting things to fall asleep entirely too literally... Just imagine – you’d end up dreaming about numbers... eep!
There are just two circumstances I can think of where abacuses might just be OK...
... if they had little sheep on them instead of beads... just imagine...
... and if there were edible abacuses, with macarons for beads. Like the gourmet / design version of candy necklaces...
* There might need to be a whole other contemplation of those...
** Or the undefined Somebody Else’s House.
*** And that might well be any...
