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Jasper Morrison: The Hard Life
Design at its the beauty, ingenuity and craftsmanship of everyday objects in rural Portugal By what means did so much beauty and ingenuity appear in articles of everyday rural life in Portugal? How did the shape of these objects balance necessity and formal perfection so skillfully? This book explores the effect that generations of trial and error, individual craftsmanship, and an instinct to carve out the essential with the slenderest of means brought to objects that made life both livable and meaningful to a pre-industrial society. The objects photographed and described by designer Jasper Morrison may be appreciated both for their beauty and for the example they set of design at its purest
208 pages, Hardcover
Published May 22, 2017
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May 2, 2021
Not celebrated for its design, Portugal has nevertheless a number of extraordinary historical solutions and materials that are down to two contradictory forces: extreme isolation and poverty on the one hand, and on the other easy universalism due to the frenetic commerce and travels of the former imperial power. The result in this selection of ethnographic objects that caught the eye of Jasper Morrison is the strength of necessity in each object. Photographed as sculptural pieces, they carry the smell of harvests and the sweat of hands.
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