“Life with Lenora” is a weekly series capturing the experiences and occasional musings of our opinion editor.
One of the perks of having a relative who made his living as an antique collector is inheriting decorations that tell a story. My great-great-uncle, Wayne Burns Daughtry, owned an antique shop in New Orleans and regularly traveled to London to purchase collectibles.
It is there he most likely collected the 17th-century oil painting I was gifted by my grandmother. Almost perfectly preserved, the 400-year-old portrait captures a young woman playing a lyre, her expression bordering on facetious. Her face is framed by ringlets of curly brown hair, and she is wearing what looks to me like a toga, layers of creamy white and crimson fabric.
Unfortunately, I’m not a history expert or art aficionada, and my uncle passed away in 1999. So, for now, I’m out of luck.
Maybe part of the allure is the mystery that clouds its context. I know nothing about the woman whose porcelain doll-like face gazes through the ornate frame. I don’t even know if she was a real woman — perhaps she was purely a product of the artist’s imagination.
She might even be rolling in her Baroquian grave, horrified that her likeness hangs on the wall above a Wayfair dresser in a random college student’s apartment.
What I do know is that my Uncle Burns had great taste in art — shaped by time, travel and experience — that now, I may enjoy secondhand.
In an era when home decor is increasingly commercialized, as furniture now consists of polished laminate over synthetic polymer mass-manufactured in a factory, I worry that our value for the immaterial is eroding.
It is the same phenomenon that fuels ultra-modernist interior design. Flat, boring textures devoid of color that worship simplicity to the extent of sterility.
Functionality is important, sure, especially for a 20 year-old like me with ADHD. But why does so much of what we purchase feel less functional than ever? Cutting production costs and increasing profit margins comes at the expense of durability for furniture and home decor.
Think about the lifespan of an IKEA table — a couple years, at best.
Maybe the value of antiques arises from the care that went into their craftsmanship, not merely because they are old. They certainly are not the solution, either: antique ownership is expensive, inaccessible and often the product of generational luck.
In an era defined by disposability, recognizing the beauty of intention in how we furnish our lives — both physically and metaphorically — can make living more meaningful.
Each time I glance at the women in the painting, I pause. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to appreciate the transcendent nature of the material and the memories it carries.
The $15 Air Forces I thrifted that have a life of their own; the multigenerational monopoly game in my closet; the bracelet I bought at a tourist trap in Jordan that may or may not have been handmade — our homes are filled with knicknacks each with their own story.
Call me sentimental, but I think the accumulation of objects each with their own intention is what brings a living space to life.
Lenora Collier is a sophomore international studies major from Hattiesburg, Miss.
