Slowing down at home.
Homes have their own particular feel to them.
Some spaces make you fidgety and you're not quite sure why; others simply invite you to slow down the day. The light becomes softer, the sound feels calmer and a normal conversation will suddenly slow down as will any of your tasks; somehow, everything becomes much more considered.
We have always been interested in spaces that induce this kind of feeling, which can be achieved not by having perfection, minimalism or even sterility in a space, but through softness, texture and the integration of natural materials.
I think this is largely down to the fact that the home is one of the few spaces left in our lives in which we can actually control how quickly the day proceeds.
Outside, life is hectic, there is constantly something taking over our attention through a screen or fashion changes in a matter of days, convenience has trumped quality and speed has been favoured over process and it does begin to feel as if life itself has been put in overdrive and will not be put into second gear.
However the home provides the opportunity to do something very different and will work to restore our balance, but this is not about completely avoiding modern life;
We play surprisingly much greater attention on the way natural materials are used, to creating this feeling of calm, as materials such as rattan, terracotta, linen, old wood and ceramics are all much softer to handle than man-made alternatives. Their surfaces absorb light in a different way to shiny, modern-day materials, and they add a warmth to a space that is anything but overwhelming.
Unlike perfectly smooth or highly polished modern objects, these kinds of handmade materials age more gracefully through being lived with, an old woven basket will take on a richer hue and the linen we use for the table cloths, will become so much softer with every wash. Age, markings, and the general patina of handmade ceramics will develop through being used, and this only enhances their appeal and makes our interiors feel much more personal to us.
I think that there is a sense of reassurance in living with materials that have been used, or that it does not matter that they are starting to age.
We always consider how a space is decorated at Indu House and whether it feels styled or lived in and often the spaces that are most welcoming are not the most perfect. They tend to be rather more layered as a result of life. We might have a tray for morning coffee every single day, or we might move our basket of logs around rooms seasonally. It all goes to contribute to the feeling of a home; you can't achieve it by simply purchasing new decorative items.
This is one of the things people mean when they refer to slow living, we don't always need to slow down every aspect of our lives; but we need to be more thoughtful about the items that surround us. We should use our homes to relax and to recharge with people that we care about rather than simply stimulating our senses in to more hyper-vigilance.
The home is a place where you should be able to do that, it is aided by the use of handmade materials which seem to have time and process built in to their DNA. The natural form and shape of them gives us visual clues that the product was handmade, thus meaning that the object arrived with a natural respect for time, for its constituent materials, and for the hand that produced it.
This is very different from a mass-produced kitchen utensil designed with efficiency rather than empathy for its user, in mind.
The comfort of not having to keep something perfectly pristine is also great to experience; natural textures do not need to be constantly maintained to appear pristine, they simply ease into being part of our lives once they are worn or damaged, and these markings actually contribute to the ambiance of our homes. Children's toys stored in baskets, wax splattered on an old wooden table, creased linen after long meals-these are all integral to their environments and are an aesthetic in themselves rather than something to get rid of.
It's is all about creating homes that allow for groundedness, rather than showing off-spaces that make us feel at home no matter what, rather than places we should be performing in.
That is the very reason why we love handmade products and natural materials, the feeling of authenticity they bring and the connection we get back to nature which our homes then give us back.
A slower home has much more to do with its ambiance than solely with décor.