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The idea of the perfect is purely western: the Greeks influenced us with this idea, constantly in search of ideal beauty, between kuros and capitals. Exactly it was the Greek sculptor Polychletus of Argos (5th century BC) who, after having taken measurements of different parts of the body of a certain number of men, came to define certain measures, imposing them as ideals. Polychletus therefore sculpted a perfect but possible body, whose proportions would be supposed by nature.
But the idea of beauty is not one, every historical period has had its own idea about it, just think of the beauty of the Renaissance, where a pale skin and a voluptuous body are the master, or the idea of beauty of Belle Epoque, with a slender and sinuous female figure, characterized by a narrow waist and voluminous hips.
Without going too far, it is enough to compare the aesthetics of the 80's with the aesthetics of the 2000's: jackets with maxi straps are contrasted in the first case with super tight clothes in the second.
In the East, a completely different ideology has developed, that of the wabi sabi. The wabi sabi is a purely Japanese aesthetic, where it is considered beautiful not the new and perfect object, but the one that has aged, that has been used. The term is formed by the word "wabi" which alluded to the loneliness of life in nature, far from society, while the term "sabi" meant "cold", "poor" or "withered".
Towards the fourteenth century, however, these meanings changed, assuming more positive connotations. Wabi now identifies rustic simplicity, freshness or silence, and can be applied to both natural and artificial objects, or even unostentatious elegance. It can also refer to oddities or defects generated in the construction process, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object. Sabi is the beauty or serenity that accompanies the advancing age, when the life of the objects and its impermanence are highlighted by the patina and wear or by any visible repairs. This ideology includes kintsugi, the technique of repairing broken ceramics with gold to give them even more value, highlighting fractures, embellishing them and adding value to the broken object. Kintsugi literally means gold ("kin") and bringing together, repairing, reuniting ("tsugi"). Recently the term wabi-sabi has been used for other fields, such as software programming, to define the acceptance of the state of continuous imperfection, or even included in the field of industrial design, in order to enhance the imperfection of a mass object, as in the case of several collectibles that have become much sought after pieces because of their unique defect.
Also here on intOndo, when we select objects we always take into account how the object has aged, whether that possible defect is a scar of the past or not, whether it is something that characterizes it and gives it that state of authenticity of the past years on its surface.
