A report from our Berlin correspondent on design in culture.
A restored crofter’s cottage and the enclosed box bed.
The Post-Materialist took a vacation on an island in the windswept Scottish archipelago of Orkney last week. Since the trip coincided with newspaper headlines about sharply rising oil prices, I began to see the gorgeous ancient designs on display in the museums as strangely futuristic — things we could perhaps learn from and re-use in a post-Peak Oil age. This stuff, after all, uses locally-sourced materials, recycles efficiently and gives us elegant solutions to the problems of energy conservation and high-density living.
The first designs that impressed me on the island were the box beds; they reminded me of the beds in Japanese capsule hotels. Used until well into the 20th century, box beds gave crofters — whose chilly cottages typically contained only two rooms — some warm and private space to retreat into. In a closet-cocoon of blankets, parents could stay warm, sleep, escape the demands of their children and work on conceiving more. The spaces above and below were used for storage; boots below, a spinning wheel above.
The beds had other uses. The story goes that one Orkney couple, evicted by their landlord, set up their box bed in the open air and proceeded to live in it. Eventually neighbors helped them build a stone house around it. It’s a tale which resonates with our own age of Credit Crunch repossessions.
The Orkney Hood gives a fascinating glimpse into Iron Age fashion. The herringbone twill weave mixes sophisticated Danish elements with simpler sections made from the brown wool of the Orkney moorit sheep. Experts think it’s a Viking garment remade by Scottish weavers; an early example of a global design being recycled locally.
Orkney Hoods. Left, a hood pulled from a peat bog in 1867. Another reconstructed by experimental archaeologist Jacqui Wood.
Finally, here are some high-backed Orkney chairs, designed to supply draft-free semi-private space for the canny crofter. The chairs often contain a hidden, lockable drawer for pleasures that the enveloping wicker back keeps personal; a pipe, perhaps, or a small bottle of whiskey.
A hooded traditional Orkney chair and a range of designs on display at the Orkney Museum, Kirkwall.
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