Barlas Baylar Hotel Décor

Visual Hospitality for Weary Wayfarers

The spirit of modern design in the upscale furniture now popular in celebrity mansions and high-profile residences is founded on an appreciation of direct experience.  It is a lifestyle all its own, an aesthetic embrace of the without from the within.  It is no mere aspiration towards personal statement or expression, but simultaneously solemn and spontaneous, both planned by man and crafted by nature.  The utilitarian ethos is revealed in the face of the various schools of thought and all their theories, subtlety of materials imbuing the noblest elegance – which is to say, the most prescient of silences – to work honestly crafted without thought of accolade or recompense.

In an age where tradition is shunned while modernity is identified with the machine, there had been a reaction to – or to be more precise, a comeback of – the ancient, almost stoic belief that being is doing.  Thus there is no theory of design and no “movement” in the arts.  Such words come from the realm of metacognition and not that of action and work.  And so spontaneous furniture, like calligraphy, must arise from out of its own materials, and not be simply assembled of them.  Therefore art, impossible to teach but possible to learn.

Such an ironic word, “art,” pointing right away at the sheer artifice of using nature to suggest nature.  But just as the most skillful acting may demonstrate truths unattainable otherwise, so might artists and artisans similarly reveal nature herself all the more intimately through human conceptions, whatever the sophist’s objections.  And still, civilization must be furnished.  Yet this return to tradition in contemporary design has found welcome in the most modern of settings, sleek where nature had been thick, minimal where nature had expanded.  The modern furniture maker like Barlas Baylar must integrate contemporary tastes with ancient crafts.

And craftsmanship itself was the craft of the ancients in a world far removed from art criticism and revolving fashions.  Intimately recognizing themselves a part of nature, no distinction was made between nature’s discards and nature herself.  In our age of digital communications that turn neighbors into veritable housemates while inviting the government into our very beds, such art is a reminder and a triumph of the human spirit.  Or as per George Nakashima: it could even be a matter of regaining one's own soul in the face of rampant desire and megalomania – the beauty of simple things.