Unwritten: The Implicit Luxury
53
thoughts are an assortment of words, without leaving any space to feelings. Making
drives us to that moment of abstraction and lets all those languages without words
gain expression. The Fourthland project, whose work explores forgotten practices
of social and environmental consciousness, says on their website about making: “it
is the intangible heritage of humanity. Art practice and making with the hands can
inform and initiate a healing of ourselves, the community and beyond” [17].
Taking the unwritten languages analysed as metaphors of human development
and interaction, and understanding that humans have found different ways to express
themselves when the possibility to translate everything into words does not exist, we
can see that craftsmanship is a central concept for all of them. When David Brett
talks about this topic in his book Rethinking Decoration [2], he defines the poetic of
craftsmanship:
This aspect is concerned with the making of it, with the fashioning of materials, and with
the pleasure to be got from our encounter with the stuff of the world; and how all these
come together to form a realm of meaning of its own kind that owes little or nothing to other
domains.
Craftsmanship is based on making. During the making process, we embody the
connection with materials, the acquired knowledge, and narratives. This action is
what leads the maker to get engaged with basic human needs and become a medium
between society and the products they make; by doing so, the maker is shaping the
self but also having an impact on society. That is why making is always a social
activity, because even unconsciously, it is always connecting embodied memories,
materials, and culture. Everything that becomes social is deeply related to empathy, as
empathy is what allows humans to get those longed for connections. Daniel Goleman
[5, pp. 95–96] in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter more than
IQ highlights the importance of emotions to develop empathy and so be able to
understand others better: “people’s emotions are rarely put into words; just as the
mode of rational minds is words, the mode of the emotions are not verbal”.
6 How Can Ancestral Cultures and Unwritten Languages
Inspire the New Concept of Luxury?
Not that long ago luxury was reserved only for people who could afford to buy
very expensive items just for the pleasure of having something, rather than because
they actually needed it. Only the rich and famous had access to the world of luxuries.
Nowadays, the game has changed and what luxury means has shifted. We cannot talk
about luxury anymore without considering words like health, happiness, creativity,
and well-being as a part of it. Stylus, a trend researcher focused on consumers,
published in 2018 a book about the macro trend of “The New Rules of Luxury” that
if we talk about luxury we now need to focus on personal optimisation, mindfulness,
development of wisdom, and individualism, because those are the things shaping
what luxury means nowadays.
53
thoughts are an assortment of words, without leaving any space to feelings. Making
drives us to that moment of abstraction and lets all those languages without words
gain expression. The Fourthland project, whose work explores forgotten practices
of social and environmental consciousness, says on their website about making: “it
is the intangible heritage of humanity. Art practice and making with the hands can
inform and initiate a healing of ourselves, the community and beyond” [17].
Taking the unwritten languages analysed as metaphors of human development
and interaction, and understanding that humans have found different ways to express
themselves when the possibility to translate everything into words does not exist, we
can see that craftsmanship is a central concept for all of them. When David Brett
talks about this topic in his book Rethinking Decoration [2], he defines the poetic of
craftsmanship:
This aspect is concerned with the making of it, with the fashioning of materials, and with
the pleasure to be got from our encounter with the stuff of the world; and how all these
come together to form a realm of meaning of its own kind that owes little or nothing to other
domains.
Craftsmanship is based on making. During the making process, we embody the
connection with materials, the acquired knowledge, and narratives. This action is
what leads the maker to get engaged with basic human needs and become a medium
between society and the products they make; by doing so, the maker is shaping the
self but also having an impact on society. That is why making is always a social
activity, because even unconsciously, it is always connecting embodied memories,
materials, and culture. Everything that becomes social is deeply related to empathy, as
empathy is what allows humans to get those longed for connections. Daniel Goleman
[5, pp. 95–96] in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter more than
IQ highlights the importance of emotions to develop empathy and so be able to
understand others better: “people’s emotions are rarely put into words; just as the
mode of rational minds is words, the mode of the emotions are not verbal”.
6 How Can Ancestral Cultures and Unwritten Languages
Inspire the New Concept of Luxury?
Not that long ago luxury was reserved only for people who could afford to buy
very expensive items just for the pleasure of having something, rather than because
they actually needed it. Only the rich and famous had access to the world of luxuries.
Nowadays, the game has changed and what luxury means has shifted. We cannot talk
about luxury anymore without considering words like health, happiness, creativity,
and well-being as a part of it. Stylus, a trend researcher focused on consumers,
published in 2018 a book about the macro trend of “The New Rules of Luxury” that
if we talk about luxury we now need to focus on personal optimisation, mindfulness,
development of wisdom, and individualism, because those are the things shaping
what luxury means nowadays.