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Blog Archives > January 2011
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January 2011
1/25/11
Defining luxury
I had an interesting revelation about a week ago while contemplating ‘need’ vs. ‘want’ as it relates to luxury and to William Henry in particular. Since we make the coolest tools we can imagine, from the craziest materials we can find, our price points clearly put us in the luxury category of goods, and I have always thought of luxury as driven by ‘want’, not by ‘need’. That may be the case, in general – but I realized with sudden clarity that it is not the case for this brand.
WH makes functional art – tools built to be used, admired, cherished, handed down. And as tools they are damn fine pieces of work that become an extension of your hand to enable your life as necessary. Fine tools, especially those that belong in your hand, serve a vital purpose – they are needed items, not wanted items.
None of us could survive without being able to sign our names – no virtual technology will replace the necessary and personal aspect of handwritten notes, signatures, etc. By the same token we cannot operate in the world without the benefit of a cutting tool from time to time – just getting into modern packaging mandates a sharp knife. Can you write with a cheap plastic pen? Sure – so can you cut with a cheap hardware store utility knife. But one way or the other all of us need the essential technology that drives my work – we all need a pen and a knife (maybe a money clip) to simply function.
I like to seek the perfect intersection of form and function in my design work at WH – finding that balance imbues each piece (I think) with its own soul, and captures a bit of magic that is timeless. The fine tools that emerge from this process, cared for along the way by dedicated artisans and technicians, are essential to all of our lives – they serve our needs while also acknowledging and catering to our wants.
Maybe ‘luxury’ is just that – pure luxury for its own sake. I am not much of a luxury consumer, so I will not delve further along that line of thinking. But WH is something else that defies that category – our work is a daily mission to capture our most essential and timeless needs in a tool worthy of our highest aspirations and talents.
Thanks for checking in!
Matt Conable, Founder
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