Worlds on display

In fashion shop interiors, I often see objects that suggest a certain environment, assemblages that seem to be taken from a different setting altogether. For example, very old sewing machines to suggest craftsmanship (even as the clothes are made in China with the latest equipment). Or piles of old books, sometimes surprisingly carefully selected (who picks them out?), or even musical instruments. There may be exceptions, but I think it’s fair to say that in the majority of cases, the manufacturing, design and retail process, as well as the customers themselves, have no relation to these objects other than the fact that they are physically present in the shops.

The practice of erecting an assemblage of objects to suggest a world that is in actuality not present might be called citing or quoting a world (a world being a referential totality of beings, in the Heidegger sense). The little world, or worldlet, is on a little stage, like a picture in a frame.

A parallel practice occurs in, for example, furniture shops. Certain shops, in Tokyo at least, carry genuinely old and worn furniture. Once I saw a big used work table from France that had no doubt supported a fair amount of actual work, perhaps some kind of craft. Now it is on sale for use in a large, fashionable home (judging by the price and additional items in the shop). In this fashionable home, the work table will quote a world just like the books and sewing machines do in fashion shops. Presumably, this will all be considered tasteful.

It would not be as tasteful if the owner of the home set up an actual work table in his living room and did heavy carpentry or welding on it, only to later sweep the work aside and serve dinner to his guests among the scratches and dust (not even if the table was properly cleaned). But it would be more honest. A quoted world at a comfortable distance — contained and framed — can sometimes be appreciated by polite society where a living, actual world could not.

 

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