Trusting your nose

Work by Wilfred Kalf
www.wilfredkalf.nl

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Nose for it?

Most people follow their noses without question. Is your nose actually your instinct that is protruding from your face? Is it trying to escape you? When suffering a cold you might wish it did just clear off. Sometimes a nose sticks itself into someone else’s business, but strangely the owner of the nose is the one who has to face the consequences. Your nose informs. It alerts you to danger and food. You use it as a reference. Yet it also has other skills and not everyone’s nose is the same in this respect. Well, you hear people say someone has a nose for a particular thing. It is never actually something you can smell or is it? He has a nose for a good deal, she has a nose for a bargain, they have a nose for finding treasures.

Where have all the noses gone?

Of course, noses are very useful for perching spectacles on, but eye-ware has been designed to take advantage of our protuberances. If you take a tumble, you use your hands to break your fall and save your nose. Smart move. A statue cannot do this. Which might explain why so many ancient statues have lost parts, if not all, of their noses. And let’s be honest, a piece of broken off nose is going to look a lot like a little piece of rock. If you stumbled across a 4000 year old weathered piece of nose, would you recognise it?

Points of reference

Things lend their identity and usefulness from the context in which they are placed or found. In other words, you know what you are looking at if you find it in a place you were expecting to find it. It is much more difficult to know what you are looking at without our usual points of reference. And so it is with brands, they provide us with a fast track, easy point of reference, saving us the effort of really looking closely, of thinking for ourselves. And if by chance you see a pebble lying near an ancient statue, trust your nose, you could have more in common than you think.

Cabinets of Curiosity

We are curious makers of things, things we dream up ourselves. Remarkable, useful, beautiful and original things. Sometimes they are made entirely by hand, sometimes partly by machine, in the future perhaps by robots. May be not robots. Always with an eye for detail and with an element of fun.

If you care to follow this blog and join our journey, we’ll share our successes and (occasional) failures with you and hopefully you’ll become a frequent visitor. Suppose that depends on us keeping you entertained. So let’s get on with the words and pictures.

Work in progress

Copyright

© Gerard Scanlan and Cabinetsof Curiosity.eu, 2015 -2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Gerard Scanlan and CabinetsofCuriosity.eu with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.