The full story
Tali
I. The Objects We Live With
We are a product of our environment. The spaces we inhabit and the objects we live with influence the way we feel, think and behave, and form the framework for our identities and life story. Colorado-based The Soft Minimal approaches the making of artworks like Tali, a tabletop sculpture in polished metal, from the belief that good design is an important element of a good life. Through insightful essays and the works The Soft Minimal designs, Tali came to be: made to meet and follow the principles that underpin a human-centric design philosophy we have shaped piece by piece.
The sculpture is polished to a mirror and holds the room in its reflection, warm in gold, cool in silver. The form comes from knucklebones, one of the oldest games on record. Put it down any way at all: three prongs touch the surface, three rise, and it stands. On a desk or a shelf, Tali turns that philosophy into something you can hold: minimalism that is quiet, tactile and lasting.
II. The Walls of Home
You and I both spend most of our time indoors. Our experience of everyday life is largely dependent on the man-made structures, materials and objects that form our modern habitat. The story of Tali's life can be felt and revealed between the walls of home (our place of sanctuary), at our work desks, restaurant tables, and within the greater infrastructure of the city. Just like the weather, the atmosphere Tali builds has a profound effect on how we rest, think, feel, work, eat and socialize.
Tali follows one design criterion: spaces and objects must certainly be functional, but if Tali is to truly serve us, it must also attend to our bodies and emotions. At this moment, designing Tali, we believe it's necessary to go beyond strict Rationalist and Modernist doctrines and help its owner resensualize the built environment with a feeling that embraces the whole human being and addresses our perception of space and all our sensory faculties. This requires slowing down the process to consider design from the perspective of human experience and sources of meaning, so each piece takes 3 to 5 days in the artisan's hands before it ships. To us, crafting Tali well must transcend utility and aesthetics to become a sensual and social exercise: to create a framework for essential human needs of safety, identity, belonging and purpose.
III. Soft Minimalism
Our process of designing and making Tali is guided by the body and mind rather than by trends or technology: we aim to create designs that not only look good but that also feel good. It is about accommodating the artisans who craft the work through empathic design, rather than treating customers as mere buyers of an aesthetic creation. We consider our work as a facilitation of well-being for our customers, as a distillation of aesthetics that resonate with the given person and place, and as a system that supports universal human needs. Each project we design, not Tali alone, is imbued with this intrinsic quality: a simplicity that carries bigger ideas.
We have dedicated the last 15 years to the pursuit of human-centric architecture and design, and project by project, have honed a philosophy and international design approach that we call 'Soft Minimalism.' With humility, we have built our ideas on thousands of years of aesthetic evolutions and on the incredible insights of master artisans and designers working before us and beside us. These lessons merge with those we have learned along the way and with the influences of our Scandinavian context. Our hope is to offer a chapter in the story of designs like Tali, which will continue to be written far into the future.
IV. Richness and Restraint
In an effort to think holistically about making works of art, Tali was designed by cross-pollinating concepts from the fields of design, philosophy, psychology, biology and anthropology. We believe each mode of thinking plays an important role in the design of Tali. We have found solutions to the problem of aesthetic overstimulation in texts on evolutionary psychology. Neuroscience has guided our curation of Tali's two finishes and of orderly compositions. Natural light is a dynamic force, one that expresses itself differently by place and by moment: polished gold was chosen to hold the warm end of the day, low afternoon sun, and polished silver the cool end, gray morning light or the pale light of a moon. Investigations into biology and physiology have strengthened our embodied understanding of solid and void. Philosophy has inspired a thoughtful approach to narrative design and sharpened our understanding of the meanings embedded in certain forms.
Tali and several of our works emerge from these combined studies to reinforce our conviction that design must be functional, personal and multisensory. Through our reading, thinking and work, we have sharpened our ability to find the balance between richness and restraint, order and complexity that leads to meaningful design. Our Danish heritage provides us with an uncompromising standard of craftsmanship and a sense of history as well as optimism for the future of our industry. Underscoring all of this is perhaps our greatest influence of all: nature.
Guided by the body and mind rather than by trends or technology, we aim to create designs that not only look good but that also feel good.
V. For Years to Come
We find ourselves returning again and again to the natural world (the primordial home of the human race) for guidance in the pursuit of timeless beauty, simplicity and connectivity. From the first design ideas for Tali, we have found particular value in universal aesthetic truths (derived from human nature) that when combined with culture, history, context and expertise, can give rise to profound outcomes. One of those truths sits in Tali's story: knucklebones, the game behind its form, was played across ancient Greece and Rome with the anklebones of sheep and goats, by children and grown-ups alike. Plato and Herodotus both mention it, and jacks, still played today, descends from it.
Through the works at The Soft Minimal, we invite you into our thought process and hope you may find valuable ideas to bring to your own life, home or work. We hope Tali will give you moments of visual, tactile and cerebral pleasure to return to over time: a way back to childhood, and the memories that stay. It is made in gratitude for the many minds, some famous and some underrated, that have guided our practice. Thankfully, we are not working in a vacuum. We hope to inspire and be inspired for years to come.
The Soft Minimal
THE ESSENCE OF
SOFT MINIMAL
Our philosophy is rooted in the belief that beauty must serve your well-being. Unlike rigid minimalism, our approach informed by Nordic discipline and Japanese tranquility seeks to amplify warmth and tranquility through restraint.
Every sculpture is crafted not just to look beautiful, but to feel right. We honor the tactile effect of natural materials and the artful balance of light and shadow, ensuring our pieces act as a meditative anchor in your space.
