Sometimes you just can’t help but commit to a self-indulgent project. In my case, this time around, resulted in a luxury object that leans toward a world of wellness and self-care. But somehow these days, it seems even the idea of personal inner peace has been co-opted by almighty corporate puppeteers, somehow translating our urges and desires for balance into dull and endless spreadsheets of control. In a time where stress is waiting around every corner and stimulating distractions only a touch or tap away, it no longer feels truthful to preach offerings that promise some ill-imagined dream of safety and tranquillity.
I had been to Nepal recently and spent considerable time scouring markets for antique objects, what I encountered was a place full of devotion, layered with Hindu and Buddhist symbology. From delicately engraved silver castings etched with immense care to simple low-fired ceramic forms pressed into crude moulds, there existed a range of cultural beliefs woven through centuries of dedication and expression. When luxury is tied to devotion, it transforms into something else entirely.
It just so happens that our modern devotions tend to celebrate ourselves. But when luxury is connected to an offering beyond the self, perhaps that is what justifies such indulgence. It becomes a kind of luxury that interweaves us into a larger tapestry, rather than reducing everything into a single special thread.
Maybe that’s why the diffuser holds such attraction for me. At its core, it is a simple therapeutic tool, a basin with a tealight underneath that evaporates scents into the air, something meant to make our spaces smell a little nicer while framing an activity that can feel relaxing or perhaps even regenerative.
And yet, I know the paradox sitting directly in front of me: all of this rendered into a luxury object that remains fundamentally inaccessible. Unless, of course, you send me something around 800 USD so I can print it in steel, package it carefully, and ship it to you. The irony is unavoidable. But like most luxurious endeavours with even a sliver of dignity, I believe these objects attempt to become symbolic containers. I hope this diffuser carries some sense of mystery, a reminder that our inner and personal rituals are still, in fact, our own.
We found ourselves in a crowded bar called cafe nick surrounded by spirits young and old dragging out long winded breaths of conversations ranging from the profane to the profound. It’s nice to eaves drop into these tumbling narratives… I can’t seem to recall any specific story, nor the faces they were attached to, as they all somehow floated into one big hazy shroud of smoke.
We asked the furniture, the walls and the paintings that hung around whether they knew who these spirited visitors were. Through their stain tinted surfaces they smiled with a texture that told us that they’ve seen crowds anonymous and familiar, stories gone and forgotten and ones that still linger. So together we observed through this clustered fog, from which extended hands, faces, glasses empty and full, I wonder where they all came from and where they’ll all go?
On the occassion of 3 days of design 2025 in Copenhagen.
Organised by @smokingdiaries
Some days have felt nameless, like a clock without its hands, the nights of one month blend into the days of another. In which void can I find my memories. To what senses can I owe my present.
yet it seems like the things felt, that are the ones which sink the deepest. Disoriented, unable to determine the point of their origin. Before any awareness is allowed to settle it, it feels like air has ran out. A threshold where the full spectrum of the inexpressible felt, pulls on you simultaneously, pulling you to the surface. A gasp, a blinding vertigo bursting white flash, disorienting any sense of balance. and with a big sigh confrinted with a scene so bright its take the eyes days to adjust.
Surrounded by light. Im reminded that its the people that have somehow found their way in front of us who are the ones that bring presence to our feelings. Who are the symbolic container to these missing memories.
to this collective glow, shining so softly upton the hills of Zoagli, Fueld by silly conversations, sometimes or most of the time bluring between the realms of absursdity and the pure. Laughts that renders the belly sore and sends the cheeks into a light cramp. Dinners made and shared that would make any grandma proud. naps pressed on by the weight of the summer heat, only to be woken by the clear salty water that rinses us anew.
even the cicadas click and clap into the evening, probably in acknowledgment to this kind of joy. The fireflies flash along to our excitement, a wink from the shadows as if they are in on something we dont yet know...
There is a section of tong choi street called gum yu gai, and it translates to goldfish market. As the name suggests they sell a whole bunch of fish of all kinds, probably even the questionable, exotic and endangered kinds. I’m not completely sure the significance of gold fish in Hong Kong culture, but as I read somewhere, its a symbol of wealth and success. Walking down this street feels like an aquarium plopped into the center of a bustling city, ordered only by its somewhat systematic layers of aquatic tanks, filled with scales coloured in varations of red, orange and gold. a colour pallete of siamese fighting fish are tied up individually into a grid of clear plastic bags, racked up and repeated through various vendors... I wonder what the streets look like from their perspective. Warped up by the plastic bubble, jailed in mid air, hanging, swimming, yet going nowhere. Standing amongst other pedestrians looking at this grid of googly eyed swimmers, somehow reflected in the tanks you’d see the sturdy old apartments scaled up behind. One cant help but make a connection to the fish trapped up in plastic bags, trapped up in our apartments, swirling within our own bubbles. In Hong Kong, 6,659 live people per square kilometer, Layered on top of each other, where famlies, dreams, joys, and sadness coexhist simulatneously. This amout of density, you can almost feel the forces of all these emotions squeezing into you, pushing you up onto your tip toes, holding you by your shoulders carrying you into a current you can yet make sense of.
As I made this odd connection, my eyes adapted to the layer beneath the reflection, mesmerised by the gold fish bobbing, weaving and flowing between each other, in a tank that feels definitely over stuffed, I make eye contact with a gold fish looking through the glass cock eyed, doing the thing they do... blop. bop. blop.