motifs

It began with respect for the bee.

Our fascination with the industrious bug can be traced back to the earliest beginnings of civilization. The Sumerians kept bees over 5,000 years ago, followed by the Egyptians. Both utilized honey for its sustenance and symbolism. Honey was worshiped in scriptures and described as a symbol of love in poetry.

Above: An industrially fabricated honeycomb.

Pablo Neruda, on the honeycomb:
Let the wax raise/green statues, let the honey/drip in infinite tongues, let the ocean be a big comb/and the Earth a tunic of flowers, let the World
be a cascade, magnificent hair, unceasing/growth of Beedom.

Honeycombs also found their way into architecture and design: As a marvel of engineering, the form of the hexagon allows for the greatest strength from the least material and labor. Throughout Asia and the Middle East it was also used universally as a religious motif.

Trompe l'oeil hexagons are used in a basket weave, below.

And a pavement in Pompeii:

The hexagon was at the heart of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist iconography. Its ubiquitous patterns are seen in the both the sacred and the profane, from palaces to prayer rugs, as in this oriental rug from Eastern Anatolia, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), below.

Below, a modern approach that sits well with Mid-century style.

Geodesic domes, like the Buckminster Fuller creation below, may be in the plans for the future colonies on the moon.

A more recent remix of the Bucky dome below:

Hyundai concept car, below:

A look into the tower from the Montreal Expo of 1967:

The perfectly hexagonal jointed basalt columns of Fingal's Cave in Scottland:

A hexagon display constructed of repurposed cardboard boxes:

A conceptual school building as a honeycomb:

The Roxy Club by Brazilian architect Fred Mafra:

A view of the suburbs of Casablanca, Morocco via Google Maps, below:

Long ago, before the living rooms of America were designed to funnel all attention into home entertainment centers, the social space of well-designed homes would have inhabitants focus on each other rather than appliances. A quintessential example is this seating platform by architect Paul Rudolph from 1955.

Just by the fact we descend into the space transforms the atmosphere into something more rarefied. It practically gushes with implied intimacy.

Perhaps the most iconic of conversation pits, below, from Eero Saarinen’s Miller House in Columbus, Indiana, built in 1957.

The pedigree for the pit may come from the Middle East or North Africa. The Moroccan trend of the early naughties brought a resurgence of conversation spaces, especially outdoor.

Below, a more recent interpretation created by March Studio, Australia.

And more classics of the mid-century:

Another of more recent vintage, below a Chicago townhouse by Roger Hirsch Architect.

As seating, this stark vision in triangles may be more appropriate for lectures on particle physics or hostile take-overs than soft-spoken candlelit conversations.

This example, with its resplendent views of the outdoors and pillowy comforts, invites much more than conversations with its provocative mirrored ceiling.

Thank you to the Ouno design blog for material and inspiration.

Some things are just better played loud, like an electric guitar.

Such is also the case with the work of British designer David Nightingale Hicks. His work is not for the timid. His use of color is strikingly bold, his motifs pulse with the heart of a giant, and his decors practically hum with manic energy. And yet, for all his optical vitality, his rooms still retain a sense of depth, space, and a kind of virtuosic harmony. Usually when we say harmony the implication is a kind of quietude, a relaxed state of being that happens when all fits into its place. Hicks's work reveals that there's so much more to it than that.

Any self-respecting designer should've no trouble making an impact with with red and gold;

but to go white with undiminished effect takes a singularly deft eye.

Or how about a bold purple room done with impeccable taste?

Or similar bold executions achieved in a limitless series of colored iterations:

As was noted in an earlier post on the history of interior design, Dorothy Draper, et al, early greats of design balanced their artistic sensibilities and ambitions with rosters of A-list of friends. David Hicks was no exception. (His first breakout project was the redecoration of his mother's house. And, by the way, his daughter's godfather was Prince Charles.) Yet, for all the blue blood tint in Hicks's social sphere, it's hard to imagine him toning down a project to pander to a client. If there's one thing apparent in a Hicks project, it'd be its utter lack of compromise.

Committees don't produce work like this:

Hicks was also known for his prodigious ability in the quick study. He could enter a room, light a cigarette, and decide within ten minutes what the aesthetic solution would be. You can imagine his difficulty in explaining the concept above. Eventually he'd just have to say, "trust me." It'll be brilliant. And he'd be right.

Shiny and velvety and round: Imagine another room featuring twin beds that's as completely sexy as this.

Hicks takes it outside.

Below are images of one of the most famous gardens in the world you've never seen: Hicks's private gardens at his home in Oxfordshire, The Grove.

Hicks mixes the traditional with whatever his fancy conjured; A description that'd probably describe all his work. History hammered into something beautiful and new.

An iconic image from the sixties: Two lovers, hair long and billowing in the breeze, running in slow motion across a field waist high in flowering grass. The scene ends with them both leaping into the arms of the other. And what was the backdrop for this fevered embrace? A meadow, of course.

Imagine the same lovers meeting in a similarly hungered embrace beneath the canopy of a tropical jungle or on the sands of a white hot desert (or heaven forbid, along the trafficky streets of an urban square or the manicured yards of suburbia even): This would never do.

The meadow is the archetype of our dreamscapes. After the archetypal white sandy beach it might be our second choice for a hypnotic mental retreat. Unlike the faraway beach it's not exotic; it represents the possible.

And now it appears to have followed us inside.

The meadow may be a chair, a dress, or the floor. It holds us as we break bread together and warms us in the cold.

A backdrop for making plans, making conversation, or making love. (The bed may be just down the hall but the rug is so inviting.)

A meadow motif in the bathroom to elevate the spirit and inspire retreat.