SOURCING ADVENTURES

Some could say that a love of objects is frivolous, I might beg to differ. I have always loved ‘things’. An old postage stamp, a small pharaoh sculpture found in the sand, an agate, a flower or the shard of a broken teacup in the Boxcar Children-adjacent yard of my childhood; these are the things that bring me joy.

Ursula le Guin captures this power in her essay, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which states that objects carry our stories; a hero’s journey can be ‘A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.’ She goes on to say “A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.”

In adulthood, my job has led me to sourcing, among other things. The dedicated pursuit of interesting and beautiful and meaningful things on behalf of my clients is a joy. One of the more wonderful experiences of life is to connect with an object that was meant for you - a thread of a story, a reflection from the universe that your journey is true.