I have stood in a shop in Paris, in a shop in Venice, in a shop in Helsinki and watched as each shopkeeper managed the affairs of running a shop… a thousand details, made and improved a thousand times, so the shop will be ready to open, to greet its customers.
Details: that is what can make all the difference.
From an architectural perspective:
The height of a door, the frame of a window, the axis of the building, the scale of the floor, the rhythm of the wall, the pattern of entry, the prospect of height, the weight of steel, the touch of wood. There are relations and patterns and parts that create a space. A good designer will see them and feel them and use them: scale, proportion, and form. One must find a balance b/t a modest budget and an immodest amount of notions. p. 44.
At its best, display is order and form, presenting a fair review of its case, the task of any good presentation. For reference and inspiration, sometimes (I) sit with Alber’s Interaction of Color, to have even a sip of the best minds.
On being a good shopkeeper:
If they are very good, then they will learn, with a few short questions, what it is that you know and what it is that you need… Shops are the measure of a town. In your mind, you keep careful track of your best and favorite shops. You judge a city by them. When you are in the city and when you think of the city, it is the shops that best organize your plans. You judge your civilization by them.
It is always a good sign when the difference is in the details.
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, about 25 mi up the coast from Copenhagen.
Ørakov – design company (Klampenborg) famous for a set of poster hangers-thin aluminum rods with a slit along their length that allows any size poster or print to be hung gracefully. (MoMA gift shop). Borosilicate glasses
https://aplusrstore.com/products/orskov-orskov-glasses-set-of-6#brand
Seeing time: Arne Jacobson City Hall wall clock
When you create life in a terrible location, then that location contributes a very special, and soulful, spirit, a kind of difficult reward. When a place is special, its terrible location became its privacy, its intimacy, and its nature. And suddenly, everyone knew where it was. The strength of character and imperfection. p.68
The Ten Best
In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki
Shopkeeping is not a universal affection. Julia Child was a kind of shopkeeper, but Vladimir Putin is not. p. 84
2 salts – only 2, best.
Time on paper – Stendig
A true shop has a life, a breath, a status, set not by algorithms but by hearts and minds. And you know it.
You are a showroom. A showroom of culture, a.showroom of types and styles, a showroom of manners even, a lure of sorts but a quietly cinematic lure, hardly blaring or brazen. You are representing perhaps the present or the past or the future m, or the present mixing of the three and tenses.
You are luring the public onto a ahow that typically does not move at all- it may twinkle a bit and even play music or flicker images, but that is barely the tinsel of it. No, the showroom is a subtler show than that-it is a show of what you could be or could have or could look like, what you might read. Or should read, or did not even know anyone was reading. Or what you are reading and must read and will read.
Shop must confirm you. And poke you. And help you. And listen. And suggest and keep you company. Praise your attention and urge that you give more attention. It is, in part, a metaphor, a wonderful shoeshine, a bright intricate scarf, a new notepad, and six ideas you did not have before.
It is a place that has what you have not seen, that has what you knew was true, that shows what you wanted and shows what you did not know. p. 1290
