Hidden Symbols

For me, every per­son­al space is a cer­tain form of a shop win­dow, regard­less of how large a space we occu­py. Vin­cent Van Gogh paint­ed the most beau­ti­ful works in a small ate­lier and Dio­genes formed the most essen­tial thoughts in a bar­rel. The ter­ri­to­ries we chose for liv­ing can be com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. It’s like choos­ing an apart­ment where we decid­ed to live for a while. We select it based on its size, loca­tion, neigh­bor­hood or per­haps the view from the win­dow. Our spaces are bizarre cab­i­nets of curiosi­ties with which we fill entire lives and that tell more about us than we can say ourselves.

I’m a child of the Cold War and lived my child­hood dur­ing Com­mu­nism and my ado­les­cence in ear­ly Cap­i­tal­ism. Pri­or to the Vel­vet Rev­o­lu­tion of 1989, it was near­ly impos­si­ble to trav­el. One grew up behind the Iron Cur­tain and the inter­net didn’t yet exist. What we had was cen­sored, deformed news from the world, books and peo­ple who told sto­ries of what they saw and expe­ri­ence abroad. Their sto­ries crys­tal­lized my imag­i­na­tion. Var­i­ous trav­el­ers brought back items from dis­tant lands and they became symbols.

You have no idea what a lux­u­ry it was in those times to receive a can of Coca-Cola. It was the taste of the West and every cool kid in the East col­lect­ed cans with dif­fer­ent cov­ers that formed sort of a puz­zle image about the world beyond the cur­tain in their small room.

I saved this col­lec­tion and nev­er threw it out. The great­est lux­u­ry is to pro­tect mean­ing­less things with per­son­al val­ue and tran­scen­dence, as they some­times man­age to even move an Iron Curtain.
As a child, I spent time with my par­ents in many art ate­liers and real­ized there are many cre­ative expres­sions of the same time peri­od and each of us is able to pick the one they pre­fer. And so I began col­lect­ing design items and, lat­er, art. In the case of design, I was fas­ci­nat­ed by its ser­i­al pro­duc­tion and democ­ra­cy, in case of arte­facts, their uniqueness.

In each city that I vis­it, I stop at a local junk shop that usu­al­ly hides trea­sures from the past. It’s a mix of prod­ucts and objects that, for some rea­son, stopped being pro­duced, although they are fre­quent­ly very beau­ti­ful. I admire these things for their authen­tic­i­ty and new­ly-acquired unique­ness. I col­lect them and use them for inspi­ra­tion because nobody cares to pro­duce them these days.

From time immemo­r­i­al, peo­ple have need­ed to sur­round them­selves with objects that become sym­bols. These are items that absorb our emo­tions and expe­ri­ences in order to mir­ror them for years to come. Every time we pass them, glance upon them or fleet­ing­ly touch them, our mind imme­di­ate­ly recalls a spe­cif­ic mem­o­ry. We are the only ones who rec­og­nize this asso­ci­a­tion, bound with the object through a secret treaty that only exists through our connection.

For oth­ers, these items only rep­re­sent the irreg­u­lar struc­tures of sev­er­al cen­time­ters of rock sed­i­ment, but for us they con­tain a sto­ry from a jour­ney, remind us of meet­ing friends or trans­port us to a favorite place. The most ordi­nary piece of a rock found at the right time at the right place sud­den­ly becomes a gem, the car­ri­er of mem­o­ries, an amulet from our trip, the cor­pus delic­ti of our exis­tence. That stone is capa­ble of men­tal­ly tele­port­ing us thou­sands of kilo­me­ters away. There are no two iden­ti­cal stones in this world and our per­son­al sto­ry fills these items with an addi­tion­al layer.

I like the short text by the Hun­gar­i­an psy­cho­an­a­lyst and art col­lec­tor Carl Laz­lo from 1973, where he cap­tures the true essence of free­dom. Not inci­den­tal­ly, it is named the Man­i­fest of Lux­u­ry. The fre­quent­ly overused word lux­u­ry is vul­gar­ized and has dicey mean­ings. At times, lux­u­ry is the mag­ic for­mu­la for snobs who can­not express the rea­son they admire a cer­tain thing. That alone is a rather sad image. But if you admit this fact, it’s actu­al­ly a very lux­u­ri­ous epiphany and there is noth­ing to be ashamed of. The mean­ing of the word lux­u­ry changes, mutat­ing with us over the course of a life­time and we learn to explore and under­stand it. And because lux­u­ry is con­nect­ed with the con­tin­u­um of time and deci­sions, this is even log­i­cal. The great­est lux­u­ry is freedom…

Max­im Velčovský com­plet­ed his stud­ies at the Acad­e­my of Arts, Archi­tec­ture and Design in Prague and in 2002 he became co-founder of the Qubus design stu­dio. He par­tic­i­pat­ed in over nine­ty joint exhi­bi­tions and his works are, for instance, includ­ed in the col­lec­tions of the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um in Lon­don, The New Pinakothek in Munich, the Muse­um of Art and Design in Prague, or the Design Muse­um in Lau­sanne. In 2007, he won the Czech Design­er of the Year award. In 2011, while also head­ing the Ceram­ics and Porce­lain Ate­lier of the Acad­e­my of Arts, Archi­tec­ture and Design in Prague, Velčovský became Art Direc­tor of LASVIT. Based on his 10 years of achieve­ments in LASVIT, Max­im has been named the win­ner of Inte­ri­or Design’s Best of Year Awards 2020 in the “Man­u­fac­tur­er: Cre­ative Direc­tor” category.