ON PERFECTION

Completeness And Perfection

Wickery can be understood as a blending of "wicker"  and basketry – and in multiple cultural paradigms. "Wicker" tends to reflect Eurocentric cum Anglocentric utilitarian sensibilities, thus the term "wickery' aims to be more expansive, and more inclusive, culturally. Also, wickery and the exploration of other aesthetic qualities and indeed kinds of perfection is somewhat confronting. In wabi-sabi there is no exact definition that non Japanese speakers can rely upon due to the Japanese fondness for ambiguity. Wabi is derived from the root wa, which refers to 'harmony, peace, tranquility and balance'. All quite desirable but none are unambiguously anything much to do with 'perfection'.

The German goldsmith, teacher and cultural commentator, Herman Jünger, working in Germany in the post WW2 era was an advocate for . an 'old German' concept of "vollkommenheit". The translation being to do with completedness and wholesomeness – a 'perfect' state when all pieces/things come together. "Perfection", he intimated was an 'industrial ideal', napoleonic in a sense, and it is what the dictionary says it is but vollkommenheit is somewhat different in regard to 'cultural sensibilities/sensitivities'.

Jünger when teaching used the metaphor of the "quail's egg" and the "ball bearing". "Vollkommenheit" being the perfection that exceeds 'measurability' and 'perfection' being definitively measurable and constraining – absolute and black and white, unambiguous. Culturally, vollkommenheit exceeds perfection. Natural materials, become more 'durable' in a vollkommenheit kind of way with their 'imperfections' contributing to the completeness and wholesomeness and adding to their durability and all the narratives that they carry – overtly and subliminally.

The completeness of something

eclipses perfection immeasurably