Barlas Baylar : The Utilitarian Ethic in Furniture
An approach based mostly on direct experience, a way of life in itself as well as a classy welcoming the without from the within : such is the anthem of modern design in upscale furniture that has been making the rounds of celebrity mansions and highly visible houses. No aspiration towards personal statements or expressions, these pieces can seem both solemn and spontaneous, planned by man and yet naturally made fundamentally herself. So does the practical ethos come through despite the strictest prohibitions against opinions and their theories. Therefore do frivolities suggest themselves to untutored eyes and sensibilities while the subtlety of its materials lend the noblest elegance which is to say the most loquacious of silences to a piece honestly made, with no thought of accolade or sale.
In a period where standard skills have been scorned and modernity is identified with the machine, there had been a reaction, or, if you will a comeback, of the traditional, about stoic, ethic alloting being to doing itself. Therefore there may be no speculation of design, no movement in the arts : such terms belong to metacognition, and not to the all-powerful and all-pervasive heritage of the human comatose. Thus it is that really spontaneous furniture, like calligraphy, must arise out of its materials, and cannot be put together by them. And so it is that such an art can only be learned, not taught.
An ironic term, art, commending the artifice that lies at the guts of reinterpreting nature. Yet just as an actress may by her most cunningly outlined lies show a truth unavailable otherwise, so too do artists and artisans understand the essential work of it all in spite of the sophist’s challenges : civilizations must have their furnishings. Yet this return to old methods in contemporary design has found its place in the most modern of settings, sleek where nature is thick with life, minimalist where nature had been fat with unmediated growth. So the modern furniture maker, one like Barlas Baylar, integrates the requirements of contemporary society with the techniques passed down through the ages by village masters simply doing their job.
A job well-done is the legacy of such ancients. Theirs was not a sector of art feedback and changing fashions, but pride in workmanship and a vision that can never be ossified by theory. Closely recognizing themselves part of the natural cycle, no discrimination was made between nature’s discards and nature herself. ( The artfulness of Barlas Baylar is informed as much by elements of environmental conservation as it is by Barlas Baylar’s own aesthetics. ) In our ever-crowded world, where digital communications can make neighbours appear too close and presidencies in our extraordinarily beds, this supposed people art is a reminder and a triumph of the human spirit. As George Nakashima wrote, it would even be an issue of regaining one’s own soul when desire and megalomania are rampant the beauty of easy things.
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Tags: barlas baylar, design, Furniture, hudson furniture, modern furniture