NOTES
On the Catalogue

"...There is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end to the making and selling of things there is no end... Man, it occurs to me, is a joyful, buying-and-selling piece of work. I have been wrong, dead wrong, when I've decried consumerism. Consumerism is what we are. It is, in a sense, a holy impulse. A human being is someone who joyfully goes in pursuit of things, brings them home, then immediately starts planning how to get more."

I’m not as confident as George Saunders in The Braindead Megaphone where he reverses his position on consumerism and instead pines for it. It’s the selling part I’m not sure about (since it seems so easy to promote all sorts of falsehoods when selling is the purpose of making), otherwise though I think making and finding are two of the highest joys available to humans. Nabokov says without a hint of pretense in his book of strong opinions: “my pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.”

We found a few new things this week: trundled sewing machine (White Rotary, Patented April 18, 1911) which folds into itself, Noguchi lamp (which I know is really a derivation from IKEA but it’s the original idea that counts). And all sorts of Christmas gifts which we cannot mention . . .

About the sewing machine Jennifer says: “I thought it was just a table at first and then I thought the top might open and then I thought it might be a sewing machine and then it was. It’s so beautiful! We’re so lucky! I'm going to sew like crazy!"