Objects of Affection

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A truth: Not all objects in our homes are created equal. Some things we love disproportionately. We stroke their slick surfaces or settle into their cushy comfort, admire them secretly, know their stories by heart.

It begs the question: What is the ONE thing (house rules—one only) you couldn’t live without? Which item inspires you? Delights you? Best reflects who you are? That’s the object that matters. It tips the balance from house to home.

Ric Lum
Local caterer, artist, thinker 

Ric Lum likes things elegantly minimal. No frivolous decoration. No fussy food. No culinary tricks. Come to think of it, no “k” on the end of his first name, either: not necessary. 
In his cooking, his artwork, his personal style—everything, it seems, except his office—Lum goes for minimal.

“I’m drawn to things that are simple,” he says, simply. “That’s why I don’t like postmodern design. A pediment on top of a skyscraper? Why? For what reason?”  

In the kitchen, his minimalist philosophy translates to menus and meals that are rigorously considered, as Lum edits away anything that he feels is not true to the dish. “I’m trying to find the essence of the food and let it speak for itself.”

His Object  A graceful, spirited Noguchi lamp that Lum bought in San Francisco’s Japan Town with the $75 he won by scratching a gas-station lottery ticket on his birthday.

“Overall, it’s something I find very beautiful and simple. There’s nothing extraneous in Noguchi’s lamps. They’re just rice paper, some wire, and a light bulb. You turn it on, and that’s it. Ultimately, that strikes me as the essence of art: just being—no narrative, no social commentary. It’s a lamp! And you know what? That’s enough.”

Ah, but then again, it’s also a sculpture. Translucent as an onion, papery as a wasp nest, lunar, lightweight, lit from within. Currently Lum’s favored Noguchi lamp resides in a corner of his office, where it illuminates—with great grace and steadfast simplicity—the chaos on his desk.

Curtis Kemp
Architect, artist, honorer of ancestors

Funny thing, family history—the older we get, the more fascinating it becomes. That is true, at least, for Curtis Kemp. He grew up hearing wild, woolly tales of Great-Great-Grandpa Downie, and read bits and pieces of Downie’s journals in high school. But it’s only now, at the age of 60 and living in the harshness and beauty of the West, that Kemp can identify with the character and courage of his ancestor.

“My mind wanders to what it must have been like to have everything you owned in a saddlebag,” he says. “To spend winters mapping out unknown territory in British Columbia, to trade with Indians . . . to live in a time when life and death were much more closely bound.”

His Object  His great-great-grandfather’s cloth-bound diary, written in longhand, clasped with metal, and handed down to Kemp from his mother, who kept the family stories alive.

In the diary, Downie chronicles the time he spent exploring British Columbia in the mid 19th century, searching for a route from the Pacific Coast through the formidable coastal mountain range to the British Columbia interior. He’d been hired for the job based on skills first honed as a teenager sailing around Cape Horn in the late 1830s and refined in the westward rush for gold in America.

From Major William Downie, born in 1819 in a tavern in Glasgow, Scotland, to Curtis Kemp sitting in his kitchen in the shadow of Della Mountain, it’s a journey of many miles and many years. The diary is a point of connection. >>>