What is luxury?

Luxury has had to shuffle sideways. Once it took great skill to throw plates, and a matching dinner service was a luxury. Now machines make a perfectly nice 18 piece dinner set in a range of colours for less than £15. Transporting food used to be slow, difficult and expensive, now you can buy one bag of oranges and get one free. Year round, because air freight has shortened distance and mixed up the seasons. If luxury is the rare and the precious, what is luxurious now?

The words used to sell luxury now are artisan, handmade and craftsmanship. They all speak of time spent paying attention. We are so rushed, multi-tasking on our consumerist hamster wheels, that the real rarity, the precious luxury is attention. And it is a safe refuge: attention can never be mechanised. There is no machine to allow us to produce more attention per minute.

We don't like to admit that we need attention, especially as adults. If we don't get enough from friends, relations and colleagues, we can pay for beauty treatments, or set up mentoring relationships, or even write a blog (ahem). Research is piling up that the experience of real-life, real-time (and ideally in-person) attention is an important factor in health and longevity. But what of the new luxury: attention goods? Can we really absorb the focus and skill of the potter from the pot? Or do we just enjoy the knowledge of it? Most people seem sure that seeing a gig or a match played live is a very different experience from the DVD. Being there has something extra - an 'atmosphere' is created by the communal focus. But what about afterwards?

Does attention leave a trace? When someone has spent hours knitting a blanket, is there something additional in the blanket itself; something not present in one made by a machine in a factory and barely glanced at? Or is it just the knowledge of that attention, and the care it implies, that makes something precious to us?

Knowledge charges traces of the maker's hand with meaning. We see the swirling pattern on the base of our mug, and we know it was made by a practised sweep of the cutting wire freeing it from the wheel on which it was thrown. We think of the potter attaching the handle, drying, firing, glazing and firing again. We can savour the attention lavished on this mug at one remove, in our imaginations. But does it exist beyond that?

If the trace of the maker's attention is real, does sustained attention from the same person throughout the making leave a different trace than serial attention paid by different makers? Does the attentive trace spring from a developing relationship between maker and made, or is it merely a kind of patina bestowed by repeated applications of attention? Do years of honing skills add to amount or change the nature of the attentive trace in an object - can you apply more attentive force as a master than as a novice?

A research trip to a fine craft gallery is clearly required.

Mending magic

Have you noticed that if you mend something, it often feels more precious afterwards?

There is some magic in mending. I think it goes like this:

Something gets broken, or torn, or worn through. You consider getting rid of it. Sometimes this will make you sad and you decide you can't part with it, and mend it instead.

By choosing to mend you are consciously recognising the object's worth, perhaps for its own sake, perhaps for the times you've had with it, perhaps a blend of the two.

In the act of mending, you make this explicit. You pledge your time and effort to your relationship with the item. I think, by not simply replacing the mug, or the jeans, you acknowledge the separate identity and value of the item, its beinghood. It may not be alive, but it is starting to shade into agency and to become a player in your life. It asked something of you, and you answered the call.

I have also noticed this during times in my life when money was pretty tight, and mending wasn't a declaration of love, but of need. I often liked the jeans better after patching than before. They had become more personal, they had something of me stitched into them. I have even felt a flicker of this this about sharpened pencils (it always seems to be a major production to find the pencil sharpener, which might explain why).

You give things life by mending them. The mend does not have to be tailored and invisible. Indeed, the animating power of mending benefits from some level of visibility. When you publicly confirm your commitment to the item for all to see, it's like a wedding.

To a lesser extent this is also true of cleaning. Check out 'boro' and 'kintsugi' on the internet, you'll get lots of beautiful images of humble items mended, and better for it. Nothing is permanent, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect. And that is an invitation to dance.