Stylish Spaces

Substance is the core matter around us, the undeniable, unshakable things that exist in all their glory or unglory (is that even a word?) - for example a chair would be substance, so would a person. Subtext are the labels we attach to substance, our opinions, our feelings and thoughts that we associate with substances around us. For instance, the chair (substance) may be refered to as a comfy lounge chair, or that ugly dump your husband insists on having that you can't wait to get rid of (and believe me you have tried spilling drinks on it, giving it a good beating in the hope the leather would split, all to no avail!). They both are the same substances, both are chairs, but we choose to see them differently based on their merits or demerits as seen by us. We do they same with people, give them subtexts based on our associations with them. We label them and choose to talk about them entirely in subtexts because thats how we see them- completely ignoring or oblivious to the fact...

Over the years spanning architectural design, a lot has been said and written about bare brickwork walls in interiors - rural, rustic, contemplated negligence, industrial -  and its prevalence in domestic interiors is nothing new - brickwork and artisans of bricklaying were highly sought and indeed travelled far and wide for their appointments as recent as last century. Back then bricklaying wasn't just relegated to being rural and rustic, some of the finest buildings were designed and built using beautiful brick and stone works -but like all forms of art that require hard labour of love, patience and precision, sadly its a dying art - I cannot imagine any young adult taking it up as a form of livelihood today. One of the things I love about the villa we are fortunate enough to call our home in Abu Dhabi is its long entrance foyer with bare stonewalls. Granted it is reconstituted stone (ground stone, pigmented with colour and shaped into different sized bricks) but the effect...