The story of the evolution of my style – ha! that’s so pretentious – is, in large part, a history of the objects I have loved. It’s not about grand visions or overarching themes, but about lamps and bookends and kitchen tools, and myriad other mundane, material things that I’ve amassed over the years. Every new addition to my home tells me a little more about what it is that intrigues me, makes me smile, makes me laugh, makes me feel at peace.

The object I adored most in my childhood bedroom was a tangerine-shaped white hanging lamp, its crenellated, vaguely alien form the result of some very intricate folding of plastic. It was a weird 70s lamp, which my 80s-hip school friends made fun of relentlessly, but I loved it, and when, during my high school years, the plastic had become UV stained and a large section broken off, I begged my parents to find me a new one. That lamp was the first bit of furnishing towards which I ever felt strongly attached, and it amazes me to think that while I caved into the whims of peer pressure in a zillion other ways, I continued to like that lamp even though my friends all found it bizarre. When I finally moved out of my parents’ house, my first new-apartment splurge was a spherical white plastic hanging lamp, bought at a Scandinavian design furniture store, that reminded me of that lamp from my old bedroom.

The other object that I loved in my parents house was also a 70s-era relic: a little sunshine yellow bookend that essentially consisted of a long piece of metal which was bent at a right angle on one end, then curled up in a springy roll at the other end. The flat side held the books upright; the coil side snapped snug to hold the books firmly in place. I liked the simplicity of the design – that a single strip of metal could do the job of two traditional bookends; I loved the elegance of its form – from the side, it consisted solely of a single circle and a single line; I was completely enamored of the cheery boldness of that yellow hue. That particular object I took with me when I left the familial nest; the little Harvard Square shop where they’d originally purchased the bookend had long since disappeared, and I couldn’t find another like it anywhere. It’s a tiny object, so small that it rarely gets noticed, but I can’t imagine my place without it.