Daily Toil: Ravenhill Studio's "Everyday Objects"
"With a touch of art direction, these objects neither transform nor offer transcendence, but they do make strange the act of living."
By Mimi Zeiger
Every year, for the past five years, the good folks at Ravenhill Studio in Los Angeles publish Everyday Objects. Each volume presents a trove of quotidian things selected by a set of creatives within the studio’s orbit.
Launched online just in time for the holidays, it is, ostensibly, an elevated gift guide—burnished to shine by the keen judgement the dozens of designers, architects, makers, curators, writers, and artists use in their selections of household items or work tools. It also is a document of the mundane actions that make up our daily lives. “The archive feels like a love letter to the objects that make doing everyday things delightful,” says Marjory Garrison, Ravenhill’s director of sales and marketing.
All entries include a close-up photograph or ASMR-esque video; one or two sentences accompanies the object. As a former participant (a vintage silver fountain pen given to me for my bat mitzvah), I know that the brief asks for contributors to take their own images. Viewed together, the collection is soothing. A balm from all the horrors that populate the Internet.
The lighting is always so nice, the shots consistently pretty. Maybe that’s the outcome of asking a bunch of visually-oriented people to make an image or maybe it’s an algorithmic function of the iPhone camera, either way, there’s a pleasure in looking closely at something so very commonplace, like a binder clip, an iced tea spoon, or a pair of kitchen shears. With a touch of art direction, these objects neither transform nor offer transcendence, but they do make strange the act of living.
Emeco’s Jay Buchbinder says this toilet paper holder “demonstrates craft in an object typically overlooked.” // Video courtesy Jay Buchbinder and Ravenhill Studio
We crave a tiny glimpse into the nuance someone else’s life. As judgement, as reassurance, as escape.
Certainly, there’s no big revelation here. Socials and Substacks are chock-full of influencers sharing and oversharing. Staring into the ring light, they peddle lists of things-you-can-buy-to-hack-your-life or aspirational-tchotchkes-bound-to-make-you-feel-poor or 15-things-you-didn’t-know-were-on-Amazon-for-your-insomniac-hours. There’s a whole TikTok genre built around celebrities unpacking their handbags. It’s amazing how many kid snacks Jennifer Garner fits in her purse.
I love those seemingly authentic moments where a writer or artist lets you in on their particular idiosyncratic totems and rituals. Those with writerly or literary pretentions (myself among others), can recite Joan Didion’s The White Album packing list on cue: mohair throw, typewriter, 2 legal pads and pens, files, house key. (Did that mohair throw show up in her 2022 estate sale?)
Above: Mike Jacobs of JACOBSCHANG Architecture called these Niwaki Higurashi Secateurs “not an everyday object, but certainly an everyday-in-the-garden object.” // Video courtesy Mike Jacobs and Ravenhill Studio
Art critic Jerry Saltz famously loads the fridge he shares with Roberta Smith with grilled skinless chicken breasts packed in Tupperware and black bodega coffee. It’s an iconoclastic performance born of necessity, with a touch of anti-elitist posturing. What might be Saltz’s everyday object? “We bought a dozen 7-Eleven cups and tops in 2017; we wash and reuse them; ditto four metal straws,” he shared with Vulture back in 2020. Not everyone is Alison Roman or Alex Tieghi-Walker.
With Everyday Objects, task trumps taste. Tape measures, utility knives, pens, leather gloves are catalogued as “Work.” Practical, beautiful, worn with use. Filed under “Kitchen,” are multiple manners of bottle openers, wine glasses, mortar and pestles, and juice squeezers. The selections are not solely about consumerism (although there are links to third-party sites if one was so inclined) but rather ask us to slow down and concentrate on the process.
And then there are the outliers, that point to something else in someone’s life—that open up a window of speculation into what specifically matters within their little world. Tyler Polich and Jessica Jimenez Keenan of Years shared a pink light bulb, an atmosphere-inducing object for intimate nights. Grain Design delivered the perfect dive mask for exploring the underwater fauna of the Salish Sea with their children.
Designer Bailey Hikawa, maker of phone cases so economically expressive they become small sculptures, submitted a Fake Fried Egg. “You would be surprised how much joy a fake egg can bring,” she shares as way of explanation. Drawn to the ways surrealism shakes us from the labor of routine, I’m bound to agree.
When Belgian painter René Magritte asked his viewers to reconsider ordinary pipes or bowler hats, it was to shake them from the stupor of reality. Today, we are awash in AI slop that feeds us what it imagines we want. Magritte’s goal was “to disrupt the order in which one habitually sees objects…to make them shriek aloud.” Maybe everyday objects will foment a collective scream. ⌂