Cairns Sharyn - Perfect imperfect: the beauty of accident, age & patina

KAREN McCARTNEY has a wealth of experience in the areas of interiors, design and architecture. She has written for a number of publications, including Art Monthly , British Elle Decoration , The Financial Times and The World of Interiors . In Australia she edited Marie Claire Lifestyle and was founding editor of interiors magazine Inside Out , a position she held for 10 years. She is the author of 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses and a sequel 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses , both of which formed the basis of a successful national touring exhibition launched at the Museum of Sydney in 2014. Other titles include Superhouse: architecture and interiors beyond the everyday and White Rooms , her first book collaboration with husband David Harrison and her second with photographer Richard Powers.

SHARYN CAIRNS is at the forefront of commercial photography in Australia, with a specialist portfolio covering interiors, food, travel and lifestyle. Her work is featured in many notable international magazines, including Gourmet Traveller , Vogue Living , British Elle Decoration and UK House & Garden . Sharyn also collaborates with architects, designers and creatives on unique projects and has photographed numerous cookbooks for well-known chefs, including Maggie Beer, Tobie Puttock and Jacques Reymond.

GLEN PROEBSTEL is a New Yorkbased stylist with a number of international clients. His ability lies not only in the skill of selecting and bringing together objects in an aesthetically pleasing way, but also in his innate feel for how to create an emotional connection. He was style director of the interiors magazine Inside Out for more than 10 years, and has worked for many international magazines, including UK Red , Bon Appetit , Donna Hay , British Elle Decoration , Vogue Living and Quintessential .

To Tracy Lines,
who was there at the beginning,
the middle & the end

Glen Proebstels signature style is about the drawing together of natural, man-made, found, cherished and repurposed elements.

It is only appropriate that the route to publishing this book has been perfectly imperfect. Undoubtedly, as time passed, perspectives shifted and the idea matured, and it is all the better for it.

In 2011 designer Louise Olsen gave me a book she admired Leonard Korens Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers . Published in 1994, it is a gentle, thoughtful book that explains in clear and intelligent terms what wabi-sabi means. On the back it states, Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional.

The book is illustrated with a series of simple but poetic black and white photographs such as a nail in wood with a rust stain marking the surface the result of rain and oxidisation. Koren asks questions such as, How do you exercise the restraint that simplicity requires without crossing over into ostentatious austerity? Thats a fair question. Where are the lines in all this, where do they cross and blur, and when does it matter?

The first proposal for this book, with stylist Glen Proebstel, photographer Sharyn Cairns and art director Tracy Lines, was more aligned to Leonard Korens philosophy. All four of us had worked together at Inside Out magazine and the shoots that Tracy as creative director and I as editor commissioned from Glen and Sharyn were always the creative high points of the magazine. We knew each others taste, style and way of working, and so when Tracy formed an early proposal and suggested the idea of doing a book together, it felt like a wonderful opportunity to create something that reflected our collective aesthetic.

This first proposal had more of a broad lifestyle feel, tuning into the authentic global desire for a sustainable, honest approach to living, which included gardening and a sense of community. It took in the trend for the resurrection of handcrafted objects, the value of the unloved, and the emphasis on the role of the makers narrative. It was a well-conceived concept and we were all primed to start.

But life can have a strange way of intervening. I left News Corporation where I had been working for 12 years, Glen moved to New York, Tracy set up a design consultancy, and we were all preoccupied with other projects. However, good ideas have the ability to resurface, and during the gap we all had time to grow and develop new perspectives.

When we revisited the idea, it was only appropriate to give it a different spin using the original idea as a foundation stone, but taking the concept in a new and contemporary direction. By visiting the London Design Festival regularly and paying close attention to my husband David Harrisons reports of the trends from the Milan Furniture Fair, I saw the rise in the importance of process, as product designers worked with a mix of technology, alchemy, 3-D printing and a more sustainable approach, while still engaging the mark of the hand. Craft was no longer defined as a backwoods activity but took on a resonance that, while anchored in something meaningful, had an excitement and forward-thinking aspect. This way, the book became not about eschewing the present and only focusing on the past, but much more about celebrating the past, alive and well in the present. With this approach, the book could marry the genuinely heartfelt and the modern without compromise.

To ensure we all had a one-track mind, aesthetically speaking, I drew up a list of key words and phrases which, we felt, could guide our content choices. This became the lens through which we assessed who and what might be appropriate to include in the book. This list held true throughout the entire process of putting the book together.