You Can’t Judge Me Like That

Having interacted with so many customers, patrons, Builders, Architects and Interior Designers over the years, I feel that judging the ‘goodness’ of material has gotten inverted somewhat. Let me explain this.

At first there were no vitrified tiles or ceramic tiles. There was just stone, of course, highly dependent on geography and geology of the time.

At first there were no laminates or veneers. There was just wood. Again dependent on the geography and the diversity of trees.

Transportation improved, so local became available globally.

Techniques of composing and making improved, so imitation of stone and wood became possible. And yet, imitation is just that! Imitation. It is not repetition. Because nothing repeats like Nature.

In certain areas, we feel like we have mastered Nature’s ability to repeat through ‘techniques’ but feels far from truth. We have just coaxed Nature to repeat for our purposes.

Let me get back to Stone for now. See that picture right at the beginning? It is a particular pattern of Granite from down south; am not bothering with the name right now. This is just the first slab/slice of the big block of granite. Slabs and slices behind this one may be quite similar or quite different depending of how geological processes may have transpired eons back.

Now, in these times, a lot of folks judge stone by uniformity. Means, they look for how similar to the first slab are the slabs behind. Atrocious! Where does this behavior come from? From mass-produced stuff. From mass-produced vitrified tiles.

And the irony? All, that’s right, all surface patterns and colors found in vitrified tiles are a copy of some or the other natural surface patterns found in stone or marble or granite. They are like the same 4 or 8 or 16 pages of a book printed over and over again. Yes, vitrified tiles are printed!

So having seen such repetition and ugly exactness in repetition in vitrified tiles, customers start looking at natural stone with the same ugly expectation. And they judge natural stone through such a lens. That’s the inversion. Horror!

Their senses get hijacked; I wonder why that happens so often. Or is it just a ruse to bargain for ridiculous prices after all?!

Hello! Just to remind you, the age of natural stone is greater than the history of all living beings arguably. Far far far far older than the history of human beings.

Pick the ugliest of stone, and it has characteristics of durability and opacity demanded by the structure or construction, it will become endearing, and look perfect in its imperfection and ugliness. Try.

---