Three millimetres

A line that jumps by three millimetres. Two materials that don’t quite meet. A cabinet standing against a wall, when it should have become part of that wall. A light fitting that is technically fine, but to my mind needs to move six centimetres to the left.

No one sees it.

I do.

I can be quite exacting about details. Not everyone who works with me always finds that pleasant. On site they sometimes look at me as if I am imagining things. What are you talking about?

And by then I can no longer not see it.

Sometimes I wonder why those few millimetres can occupy me so much. No one will ever walk in and say: how lovely that the top of that cabinet lines up exactly with the window frame.

And yet that is exactly where a large part of my craft lies. In what you don’t consciously see, but do experience.

We often mistake calm in an interior for having little. We clear things away, choose neutral colours, straighten the lines and call it minimalism. But an empty room can feel remarkably restless. And an interior full of art, materials, textures and objects can feel deeply serene.

For me, calm does not come from having little.

Calm comes when things are right.

That doesn’t mean everything has to be smooth or flawless. Quite the opposite. I love natural stone with an unexpected vein. Wood that is alive. Handwork in which you can still see that someone made it. Art that chafes a little. Sometimes I deliberately add tension, because otherwise a room becomes too well-behaved. What I am looking for is not perfection, but coherence.

Perhaps that is why I design so much bespoke. Not because it has to be exclusive, but because a space sometimes asks for something that doesn’t exist yet. Exactly that proportion. That line. That material. In that place.

Over the past few weeks in South Africa I walked through stone yards and workshops. No polished showrooms, but dusty yards full of stone slabs, stacks of timber and people shaping with their hands what will one day become an interior. It can make me intensely happy. Because there I see again how much attention lies hidden behind something that, in the end, should look effortless.

The eye misses a lot. The body does not. Your nervous system registers every line that is slightly off, long before your mind can name it. For me, that is where The Home of Soul begins: first feel, then see.

And perhaps that has become my definition of luxury.

Not more.
Not more expensive.
Not more striking.

Attention.

From the maker who redoes a joint because he knows it can be better. From the designer who moves a line one more time. From someone who takes care over three millimetres that no one will ever consciously see.

But everyone will feel.

Where are your three millimetres? And when did you last move a line one more time, when nobody asked you to?

Mariska Jagt — interior designer and founder of The Home of Soul