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D W E L L I N G W I T H D E S I G N
P 217. Janne’s clock
217
182 A: I just had to throw it away, some candle holders, which just didn’t, for
those tall candles, and there was some (pause) [...] It was simply just
such an ugly product that (laughs) I had to throw it into the rubbish
(laughs), I couldn’t think of selling it to someone, like on a flea market,
because I thought (laughs) no-one deserves things like that (Anniina
04 328-336)
Not surprisingly, typically the products that the interviewees wanted to keep
the most distance from had often entered the apartment without the interviewee
having taken the initiative.
In addition to the items that no one in the household apparently appreciated,
there were also those products that someone else in the household
liked, but not the interviewee. Kalle hated a mask that Emma had received
as a Christmas gift and had then painted herself; Sanna just barely tolerated
Kalevi’s television, while Janne was a mildly amused by his children’s interest
in a decorative Swiss clock (P 217). These are good reminders that members of
the same household do not need to march in perfect unison in order to put
together an aesthetically sufficiently coherent and pleasing home.
Another common reason for the presence of distant design in the apartment
had to do with the scarcity of either a household’s resources or a lack of available
alternatives on the market. It may be that the product never met a household’s
taste, but that the they could not have afforded what they would have really
wanted, or that there was not or even still is not a perfect product on the market
to replace the product. The most common reason for distant designs, though,
seems to have been a lack of time and also often of money. As Hannele’s account
of their Lundia bookshelf illustrates, one rarely is in a position to do everything
at the same time and it takes time to accomplish a project. On another occasion,
Hannele described splendidly what it is like to solve difficult, time-consuming
decoration problems: