moon_custafer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moon_custafer) wrote2013-06-18 08:25 pm
moon_custafer) wrote2013-06-18 08:25 pm
Entry tags:
Junque Mail III
It was a busy Friday, and I hardly had time to think about H.H. Furnishings, Ltd., but I took the catalogues home with me, made myself a sandwich, and opened the laptop again.
An examination of the front and back pages showed no photography credit, so I tried searching “Hutton+Holmes+photography+portfolio.” The search terms didn’t entirely weed out home décor blogs, but among the results was a page for Nancy Holownia, photographer, whose deep-focus landscape shots showed the same style as the photographs in the Plein-air Entertainments. The site didn’t seem to have been updated since the previous year.
Stop and think, Petal. Don’t start building a conspiracy theory without a reasonable motive. Most people don’t plot just for the sake of plotting.
What do you actually think these catalogues are for? You know now that there really is a company behind them? They have to be reaping some benefit or they wouldn’t go to the trouble.
How do most other people respond to the catalogues?
I looked up H.H. Furnishings and this time, skipped down from the company’s own website at the top of the list of responses. There were plenty of others. Sites that discussed the virtues of the furniture; sites that dissed it; sites that showed how to imitate the look with thrift-store finds, coats of paint, and sandpaper. Lots and lots of images from the catalogues reposted for “inspiration.” Some of the imitations were pretty good, and I had to admire the skill while shaking my head at this down-the-rabbit-hole universe where people were purposefully trying to make their homes look abandoned, haunted.
The phrase ‘breaking it down’ was used. A lot. Numbers, ampersands and individual letters appeared, out of context, as decoration. A collage world where life was half yard-sale, half school art project. It was like the bookend to those old jetpack visions of the future: here were antiques freshly-deconstructed, industrial yet ancient. Everything on wheels – for evacuation in times of emergency? A pair of dirty angel wings overhung a child’s crib while a chandelier glittered with dog-tags. And everywhere, detritus of the ocean, as if the seas had overrun every home before just as suddenly vanishing.
There was a stack of books – corner-on and half out of focus, but I could partially make out the titles on the spines:
Anatomy of Me—
Les silences du C--
… for Leibowitz (upside-down)
Started to make coffee but checking the fridge, found I was out of milk. I’d been putting off grocery shopping since the day before, so I made a list and stepped out to the local supermarket to pick up pears, tamarind sauce, chicken legs (on sale) and the milk. I bought a coffee and a raisin-and-cinnamon bagel at the shop next to the supermarket. The brightly-lit ordinariness of the chain businesses was refreshing after hours of staring at otherworldly décor.
Then, on the way home – a battered dining chair was standing by the curb, startling me more than it should have. It looked like one of the H.H. catalogue’s tableaux, with its varnish forlornly worn off the wood. Surprisingly, the woven cane seat was intact, and clean. On impulse I shifted the grocery bag to my other shoulder and picked up the chair. As I reached my building, doubts overtook me. My mother would be appalled. For this she had worked to put me through college, so I could pick up other people’s garbage instead of buying new things? I would have dumped the chair there and then but a neighbor coming out the front door had already recognized me:
“’Morning, Petal! Nice chair,” she said, apparently without sarcasm.
“Thanks. Just picked it up.” There was no chance of tossing the thing now, not without an explanation I didn’t feel like giving.
When I got the chair into my living room, I examined it again and felt a little better. It was a nice chair, intact, and with a fresh coat of paint it would look perfectly respectable. If my mother asked I could say a friend was moving house and had given it to me. Neighbourliness was perfectly acceptable.
An examination of the front and back pages showed no photography credit, so I tried searching “Hutton+Holmes+photography+portfolio.” The search terms didn’t entirely weed out home décor blogs, but among the results was a page for Nancy Holownia, photographer, whose deep-focus landscape shots showed the same style as the photographs in the Plein-air Entertainments. The site didn’t seem to have been updated since the previous year.
Stop and think, Petal. Don’t start building a conspiracy theory without a reasonable motive. Most people don’t plot just for the sake of plotting.
What do you actually think these catalogues are for? You know now that there really is a company behind them? They have to be reaping some benefit or they wouldn’t go to the trouble.
How do most other people respond to the catalogues?
I looked up H.H. Furnishings and this time, skipped down from the company’s own website at the top of the list of responses. There were plenty of others. Sites that discussed the virtues of the furniture; sites that dissed it; sites that showed how to imitate the look with thrift-store finds, coats of paint, and sandpaper. Lots and lots of images from the catalogues reposted for “inspiration.” Some of the imitations were pretty good, and I had to admire the skill while shaking my head at this down-the-rabbit-hole universe where people were purposefully trying to make their homes look abandoned, haunted.
The phrase ‘breaking it down’ was used. A lot. Numbers, ampersands and individual letters appeared, out of context, as decoration. A collage world where life was half yard-sale, half school art project. It was like the bookend to those old jetpack visions of the future: here were antiques freshly-deconstructed, industrial yet ancient. Everything on wheels – for evacuation in times of emergency? A pair of dirty angel wings overhung a child’s crib while a chandelier glittered with dog-tags. And everywhere, detritus of the ocean, as if the seas had overrun every home before just as suddenly vanishing.
There was a stack of books – corner-on and half out of focus, but I could partially make out the titles on the spines:
Anatomy of Me—
Les silences du C--
… for Leibowitz (upside-down)
Started to make coffee but checking the fridge, found I was out of milk. I’d been putting off grocery shopping since the day before, so I made a list and stepped out to the local supermarket to pick up pears, tamarind sauce, chicken legs (on sale) and the milk. I bought a coffee and a raisin-and-cinnamon bagel at the shop next to the supermarket. The brightly-lit ordinariness of the chain businesses was refreshing after hours of staring at otherworldly décor.
Then, on the way home – a battered dining chair was standing by the curb, startling me more than it should have. It looked like one of the H.H. catalogue’s tableaux, with its varnish forlornly worn off the wood. Surprisingly, the woven cane seat was intact, and clean. On impulse I shifted the grocery bag to my other shoulder and picked up the chair. As I reached my building, doubts overtook me. My mother would be appalled. For this she had worked to put me through college, so I could pick up other people’s garbage instead of buying new things? I would have dumped the chair there and then but a neighbor coming out the front door had already recognized me:
“’Morning, Petal! Nice chair,” she said, apparently without sarcasm.
“Thanks. Just picked it up.” There was no chance of tossing the thing now, not without an explanation I didn’t feel like giving.
When I got the chair into my living room, I examined it again and felt a little better. It was a nice chair, intact, and with a fresh coat of paint it would look perfectly respectable. If my mother asked I could say a friend was moving house and had given it to me. Neighbourliness was perfectly acceptable.