Ever Present
Michael Boyd writes to Alba Kane and COMMUNE
Hey! I feel like both you guys and I have this idea of an unfussy California-chic thing. Classic but alternative. European modernism filtered through direct approach California-craft and build tradition.
SoCal ghosts we listen to are the barefoot Schindler, sun seeker Neutra, the radiant Eameses, as we are living in the land of Ellwood, Irving Gill, Paul Williams, and FLW… these are our heroes especially when it comes in cypress or redwood!
There is a NorCal strain too, speaking of cypress and redwood — with thinking of Luther Conover, James Prestini, and Donald Knorr… yet we also seem to always be discussing Josef Hoffmann, Otto Wagner and Vienna turn-of-the-century… focused on elegant solutions, function and glamour…
Anyway lots of influences and forefathers and mothers from the past we chat about but lots of new discovery together too in the now. COMMUNE is ever present.
Not sure how to explain it but it is always inspiring to explore the possibilities together as a team and extended family.
The COMMUNE details are always so interesting and beautiful and they always build on the foundation and story of the design.
With MUCH LOVE,
MB
Response from Alba Kane and COMMUNE
Hi there Michael,
I keep coming back to your idea that our COMMUNE is ever present. The timing is ripe for a deep breath on this thought. The world can change in every possible way, but curiosity and imagination are ungovernable and what a relief that is. It’s simple but profound, much like the ease of our communing and the products of our work.
In my attempt to define what we do together, I’m thinking about how we do it. In our studio, we always begin with the analog teachers: books, historical records, magazines. We pin pages on the walls (talk about ghosts of the past) and rely on them to take us to the spaces and places beyond our current existence. It’s a process of grounding ourselves in what came before, honoring it really. Your kindred spirit does the same.
Inevitably, we are tasked with building something anew no matter how much we wish to revel in the past. We ask ourselves a deceptively simple question: how do we bring the full-grown principles of the past into the adolescent now? Michael Boyd, we think…. And so it is, that we ring you up and tell you a crazy dream and ask you to design it with us.
It’s you we think of when we need a chair to find itself thousands of miles away in a Kyoto hotel whispering to its occupants the stories of its California modernist roots. It’s you we turn to when we seek to explore how something designed for a suburban home in the 50s can be adapted for a bustling restaurant. It’s you we look for when we need a storage room full of vintage posters. It’s you we engage when we need to know the exact proportion of a Prouvé table leg. The list goes on. It’s ever present.
I’ll leave you with this. How lucky are we to come together in this time and place — this being the ‘ever present’ you mention — and to meet in middle with our work? Ours is the kind of work gifted with both the wisdom of history and the boundlessness of discovery. I reckon this is what your mind is stumbling across as it searches to define what we do together.
These are just some thoughts on what you mean to our studio, what your artistry brings to our COMMUNE. Your wealth of knowledge, your precision as a designer, your fearlessness as an artist, your obsessions as a curator, your love of books…they’re ours too.
With immense gratitude,
Alba and COMMUNE
