The Symptoms.
I often joke that I know the kind of person who buys these publications, because I am one of them. I know the symptoms firsthand.
Henrik Adamsen for PSM 38 / Mathilde Petersen
My house is full of magazines and books about beauty. Beautiful interiors. Unforgettable faces. Iconic cars. Mostly photography and motoring, in truth. I have a whole shelf of The Road Rat alone, which probably tells you enough. Then there are books by photographers, a few interiors magazines, and a floor to ceiling bookcase full of novels and other books I have kept because I know I will want them again. At some point it stops looking like a preference and starts looking like a habit that got slightly out of hand.
But I have always felt at home with people like that.
People who keep books long after reading them. People who notice paper without making a ceremony of it. People who can remember where they were when they first found a certain magazine, or why a particular cover stayed with them. I understand that way of moving through the world because it is very close to my own.
That is also why I have never been interested in making books for everyone, much less for people in a hurry.
What I care about is making something that feels right in the hands of the person who receives it. Something they will want to keep nearby. Something they may return to years later and still feel quietly glad to own.
I think collecting, at least in the way I understand it, has less to do with accumulation than with attachment. You come across something and, for whatever reason, it stays with you. It earns a place in your home, and then in your life.
That is probably the person I have in mind when I make these books. Not in any calculated sense. Just naturally. Someone who still likes to live with books, and who does not need everything to be immediate in order to value it.
If you are reading this, there is a fair chance you know exactly what I mean.
Hugs,
Fran Domínguez
Founder & Creative Director, Rush Museum