Still Life

The decision to paint everything the same deep sage green was made early and held firmly. Walls, ceiling, counters, floor, built-in shelving. It is the kind of decision that sounds simple and is not. A monochromatic room lives or dies on the quality of what you put inside it. Organic blob-shaped display niches were carved into the walls and backlit from behind, their warm glow competing with an eclectic mix of vintage pendants above. The ceiling was curved and cove-lit, so the room has no hard edges anywhere. A wavy free-form mirror stands against one wall. Velvet curtains close off the rear. The terrazzo floor picks up the green and deepens it. Against all of this, the products become luminous. Colourful ceramics, blown glass, small sculptural objects. The green does not compete with them. It isolates them, the way a jeweller's cloth makes a stone look more itself. Still Life is a small space that knows exactly what it is. That kind of certainty is rarer than it looks.