Tools For Thinking Summer/Autumn 2015

TO O L S FO R T H I N K I N G Summer | Autumn 2015

TO O L S FO R A THOUGHTFUL LIFE Good thinking requires good tools. To complement their classes, books and therapies, The School of L ife now offer a range of stationery, homeware and gift products that are both highly useful and stimulating for the eye and mind.

The School of L ife is dedicated to exploring life’s big questions. How can we fulfill our potential? Can work be inspiring? Why does community matter? Should relationships last a life time? We don’t have all the answers, but we’ll direct you towards a variety of useful ideas – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – that are guaranteed to stimulate, provoke, nourish and console. www.theschooloflife.com Twitter: @theschooloflife Facebook: theschooloflifelondon Instagram: theschooloflifelondon

The School of L ife products are available from Polite Company. For the latest range visit: www.politecompany.co.uk

NEW

Emotional Baggage Pouch – page 54

Writing as Therapy Journal – page 42

Emotional Baggage Pencil Case – page 54

Cleaning as Therapy: Tea Towel – page 76

Cleaning as Therapy: Soap – page 76

Culture: A Memory Game – page 24

Key Traits Key Tags – page 52

Seeds of Virtue Notecards – page 68

GAMES & KITS

10 0 Q u e s t i o n s FA M I LY E D ITION 100 question cards with box 150 x 115 x 50 mm OTHER EDITIONS AVAIL ABLE: Original | Work | LOVE

It isn’t always easy for families to relate, but good conversation can play a part in building a strong connection between generations.

In this box you will find 100 carefully composed questions designed to spark imaginative, thoughtprovoking conversations between children and adults. Use them as a tool for learning more about one another, building confidence and communication skills – and to liven up time spent together as a family.

Topics Include: Family | Life | Personality | School & Education | Careers | Friendship & Hobbies | Technology, The World & Space

Games & Kits

100 Questions

How to use the cards: 1–These cards are ideally suited to families, and are perfect for use at the dinner table, at bed time or on road trips or other family occasions.

2–Pick a card, read it out and take turns answering the question.

3–The questions are designed to be answered by everyone eg. What do you/ did you like most about school? should also be answered by adults remembering their school days; likewise When you were little, what job did you want to do? can also be answered by a child (remembering when they were younger). 4–Have fun – see where the conversation takes you! 5–Repeat often.

14

Games & Kits

100 Questions

16

A– 100 Questions Love Edition (Red)

B– 100 Questions Work Edition (Blue)

C–100 Questions Family Edition (Green)

D– 100 Questions Original Edition

15 minutes (FOR WHAT REALLY MATTERS) Gl ass timer 130 x 55 mm | tube Instruction booklet

Games & Kits

15 Minutes

Our lives are so busy and frenetic; we are always forgetting to make time for what really matters.

Here we have a finely crafted glass timer whose grains measure out 15 minutes. That isn’t very long, and that’s the point: it’s longer than we often give to many of the things we ostensibly think of as so important – like properly listening to a partner, rationally analysing our career ambitions, or playing in a concentrated way with a child.

The glass timer is a tool that prompts us to carve out 15 minutes for what truly counts. It creates a floor beneath which it challenges us not to fall.

And, as sand flows from one vial to another, it also looks extremely beautiful.

18

A

COLOURING AS THERAPY A1 Colouring Poster 594 x 841 mm AVAIL ABLE in FOUR Designs

Colouring is not just for children, but an enjoyable and therapeutic pastime for adults too. We work hard to juggle the many challenges and complexities of modern life, and we need time to relax and recharge. The simple, meditative act of colouring can help to alleviate anxiety, sharpen our concentration, and cultivate a deep sense of calm.

This new set of colouring posters from The

School of L ife , has been designed in collaboration with four up-and-coming illustrators. From a clever subversion of a traditional still life of fruit, to a crashing wave created with philosophical quotations, they are playful, thought-provoking, and encourage you to exercise your imagination as you select your colours and fill in between – and outside – the lines.

Games & Kits

20

Colouring as Therapy

C

D

B

A– Walden Pond

by Michael Kirkham

B– Know Yourself

by Jeffrey Bowman

C– Wave (detail)

by Sarah A. King

D– Still Life With Fruit E– Walden Pond (detail) (detail)

by Atelier Deux-Mille

by Michael Kirkham

E

The Thinker Game 52 game cards 89 x 126 mm Instruction card and index of GREAT MINDS included

Available September 2015 I think… therefore I am…? This ‘guess who’ game features 52 great thinkers drawn from The School of L ife’s curriculum. From da Vinci to Freud, Machiavelli to Woolf, players take on the personas of leading figures from the worlds of anthropology, architecture, art, design, literature, philosophy, political theory, psychology, science and sociology. Your opponent tries to guess who you are by asking ‘yes/ no’ questions or – if stumped –by requesting hints. A brilliant way for players of all ages to learn interesting facts about humanity’s brightest minds.

INDEX OF GREAT MINDS: Margaret Mead Le Corbusier, Eileen Gray, Oscar Niemeyer, Coco Chanel, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cy Twombly, Johannes Vermeer, Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, Sappho, William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Marcus Aurelius, Simone de Beauvoir, The Buddha, Confucius, Epicurus, Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, La Rochefoucauld, JeanJacques Rousseau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sen yo Rikyu.

Games & Kits

22

The Thinker Game

Culture: A Memory GAME 36 Pairs | 60 x 60 mm cards Printed grey board | Supporting booklet

Cultural Memory is a matching game showcasing iconic works of art, architecture, design, and literature. Each work represents a unique perspective or key insight into the question of how to live a good life. Together, they form a visual index of some of the best ideas in the world. Designed to be enjoyed by grown-ups and kids of all ages.

How to play: Mix and place cards face down.

Players take turns turning any two cards over at a time. If the cards match, the player takes another turn. If the cards do not match, flip the cards back over and the next player takes their turn. When all pairs have been matched, the player with the most pairs wins.

Games & Kits

24

Culture: A Memor y Game

Available September 2015

S TAT I O N E RY

Places Ideas 20 Postcards with wrap around cover 148 x 105 mm

We readily feel moved by places we visit, it might be a great city, or a dramatic stretch of coastline that excites us, or perhaps like Marcel Proust we find railway stations strangely thrilling or like the painter Edward Hopper, it is the overlooked, less obvious locations that touch us. Whatever they are, these place are showing or telling us

something important. But it can be hard to pinpoint just what it is.

Instead of providing extra information about locations we love Places/Ideas pursues the less familiar, but perhaps more important, task of exploring the bigger, more lasting – and deeper – meaning for the rest of our lives.

Stationer y

27

Places/Ideas

20 Poems T went y cards foil blocked onto grey board |Â 220 x 158 x 25 mm buckram finish box

Stationer y

20 Poems

Using rhyme and rythmn and all the tricks that make words stick, a poem pins down and elusive sliver of experience and shows us its true importance or it makes a wise point with wit. These short poems are easily remembered, so they come to mind at the right times. When we posses them they live with us.

28

20 Aphorisms T went y cards | foil blocked onto grey board 220 x 158 x 25 mm buckram finish box

Stationer y

20 Aphorisms

Cards with Short Sentences & Large Truths. Aphorisms are short, pithy statements designed to provoke a thrill of recognition at valuable, amusing, dark and perhaps awkward truths. We’ve printed twenty of our favourites from across history onto beautiful grey cards, ready to be sent to a friend or stuck on the fridge.

KEYWORD PENCILS SIX HB pencils | Definition booklet Buckram finished BOX Four sets avail able: Visual Arts, Literary, Psychoanaly tic & Philosophical

The School of L ife tries to find answers to life’s big questions through the use of culture, which includes academic disciplines like literature, art and psychoanalysis. These disciplines often work with some rather complicated words; beautiful, useful but perhaps slightly forbidding terms (like BATHOS or PROJECTION).

We thought it would be helpful to print a selection

of these words elegantly along some finely crafted pencils so that we’ll get them more clearly in our minds while we write. We’ve packed 6 pencils into four boxes, each dedicated to an academic discipline, and containing a leaflet which perfectly explains what these words mean and why they matter. An ideal combination of the thoughtprovoking, the attractive and the useful.

Stationer y

30

Key word Pencils

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOUR 12 COLOURED pencils 100 x 185 mm definition booklet buckram finish box

Stationer y

Psychology of Colour

Many of us haven’t owned a nice box of coloured pencils since we were children. Yet no adult life should be without one; they provide a route to a wide array of moods and inspirations. This set introduces us to the psychology of colour, teaching us how a shade can link us to a memory or feeling.

32

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT NOTEBOOKS Each paper banded set contains 3 notebooks (one each of pl ain, grid and lined paper) 125 x 178 mm 64 pages 10 different sets avail able

The history of philosophy is filled with some fascinating ‘schools of thought’ dedicated to tackling life’s big problems in distinctive ways.

These exquisite notebook sets each carry an introduction to a great thinker on the inside front page, their name beautifully printed on the cover and otherwise empty pages for your own projects.

The latest editions in the collection focus on four artistic movements: The English Modernists, The Bauhaus, The Minimalists and The Pop Artists.

Stationer y

School of Thought

34

When artists like Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson were starting out – in the 1920s and 1930s – English Modernism seemed like a contradiction. You could make traditional English art or you could embrace the Modernism coming from Paris, Berlin and Vienna. But you couldn’t be loyal to both. Either you were fond of villages, fields and family life or you were attracted to abstract forms and adventurous materials.

A large empty white canvas with a solitary deep black line down the middle. A splodge of purple paint against a yellow background. Ten steel beams arranged in a neat pile. What does it mean? Is someone making fun of us?

How can they get away with doing so little?

Emerging initially in the US in the 1960s, Minimalism is a strategic rejection of excess. (It’s not that the artists were too lazy to do more.) Rather than simply show us the chaos, clutter and frenetic demands of modern existence, minimalism offers us a cure. Simplify, reduce, concentrate on one thing at a time. Minimalism is an approach to economics and daily life presented to us in the guise of an art movement.

One of the things art can do for us is reveal false dichotomies. That is, show us when we are really faced with a failure of imagination, rather than a real impossibility.

It was possible to love the simpler, authentic habits of provincial English life and be a modernist. But it took the imagination and determination of some pioneer artists to show how.

Stationer y

School of Thought

36

Pop Art emerged in Britain and the UK at the end of the 1950s. It wanted to connect art to the ordinary objects of everyday life and with the images of commercial culture. Comics, adverts, mainstream films and television shows were – traditionally – regarded as vulgar and as unworthy of notice by serious, elite artists. Pop Art recognised that they could be charming, beautiful or even quite moving.

It started from the generous, democratic insight that the ideas we need might turn up in surprising places. Contemplating the label of a tin of soup can be a profound experience. An image in a comic book might touch us as deeply as the most prestigious works of literature. The ordinary is honoured, as it always should be.

The Bauhaus (or literally, ‘the house of construction’) was founded in Weimar, shortly after the end of World War One. Its founder Walter Gropius wanted to remove ‘the class barriers’ between art and craft, or between engineering, urban planning and architecture. Gropius recognised that industrial production would overwhelmingly dominate, and his aim was to guide high-quality design for mass production consumer goods: chairs, lamps etc.

After being relocated to Dessau and then Berlin, the Bauhaus was closed in 1933, as it was perceived as ‘communist’ by the Nazi party, which had just come to power.

Although, by driving the leading figures overseas, it in fact massively increased the influence of their ideas.

The Buddhists | Buddha, Guanyin, Ryokan

The Anti-Capitalists | Rousseau, Marx, Adorno

The Feminists | Mill, de Bouvoir, Greer

Stationer y

School of Thought

38

The Existentialists | Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre

The Stoics | Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius

The Pessimists | Pascal, Chamfort, Schopenhauer

Big Thinkers A set of t wo A4 notebooks | 125 x 178 mm pl ain, and lined paper (one of each)

Darwin & Woolf | A big thinker isn’t just someone who is famous for their ideas. What makes them big is that they get at things which matter to us personally: they discover ideas that help us live as we’d like to. Darwin showed us how we came to be the unique creatures we are. Woolf, who read him closely, noticed areas of our minds that no one had ever described before. Animals we may be, but never more impressive than in the case of these two great English thinkers.

Nietzsche & F reud | Nietzsche understood that, with religion in decline, we had to learn to seek consolation and guidance from art. New generations keep attempting to prove Freud ‘wrong’, but he endures because we can never escape his insights into why it is so hard for us to understand ourselves, and at the same time so necessary.

Here, together as they deserve to be, the two great German intellectuals of the early modern period.

Stationer y

40

Big Thinkers

Writing as Therapy JOURNALS A5 Linen bound notebook 210 x 148 mm 192 pages 100gsm Munken paper with printed dot grid

We have so many vague feelings of hurt, envy, anxiety, and regret, but for the most part we never stop to make sense of them. It’s too uncomfortable, and especially difficult because we are so often busy and frazzled, hyperconnected yet a bit lonely.

To really understand what we feel and think, we must turn away from distractions, common sense, and other people’s opinions. We need to develop intimacy with ourselves. Our unthought thoughts contain clues as to our needs and our longer-term

direction. Writing them out is key.

Through writing, we recognise patterns to observe and, perhaps, outgrow. We can strategise – a remarkably neglected task. We can ask ourselves why we make the choices we do. We can question faulty narratives and create new ones.

We can consider ideas before we commit to them, reinforce good ideas we already know. Writing is ultimately the task of discovering and developing what we think. There could hardly be a more important personal goal.

Stationer y

42

Writing as Therapy

Mood Books Hardback sketchbook 189 x 247 mm 132 pages BL ANK PAGES WITH ARTWORK ENDPAPER

Stationer y

Mood Books

Our best moods are often hard to get in touch with. At The School of L ife , we believe that great works of art can put us back in touch with our better selves. So we’ve created some notebooks lavishly illustrated with paintings across their endpapers, each book containing one painting ideally suited to provoking a particular valuable mood and a caption highlighting its therapeutic potential.

A hard-backed notebook with exposed binding detail and full colour endpaper images. Each blank page has a space to fill in the date, time and your frame of mind.

46

We’re invited to look at a painting by Katherine Campbell Pedersen as a conduit to being more PRODUCTIVE.

An image by Cy Twombly reminds us to be SCEPTICAL

An exquisite work depicting the fi rst cross-channel balloon crossing is a reminder of the importance of being DARING.

DRAWING AS THERAPY Sketchbook Hardback sketchbook A4 with multi coloured stitching Pl ain sketch paper | 132 PAGES

We often get inhibited around drawing. After years of representing exploding spaceships and happy cows, at a certain age – maybe seven, or thirteen – we come to the forlorn conclusion that we can’t draw. Our anxiety stems from the deeply natural – but ultimately misguided – idea that we can’t enjoy drawing privately, just for ourselves.

We judge our achievements by some external, and actually irrelevant, standard. We glance longingly at art materials; we like the weight of a particular pencil; we are charmed by the heavier texture of the paper. But often we lack the courage to start again and let ourselves draw. There’s such a lot of anxiety around failure. The act of drawing – if you are like this – is in itself a therapeutic move. It is a demonstration that fears can be tamed and that inhibitions can yield to fun.

One thing drawing helps us with is the bizarre fact that we generally don’t actually notice very

much of what is around us in the world. Of course we know that a person’s ear is stuck to the side of their head – but it’s only when we try to sketch an actual person’s head that we start to notice where and how. It’s a huge, unendingly valuable lesson: there’s so much going on around us all the time that we don’t really see until we make ourselves look at it.

Or you might want to flesh out a daydream. What would the perfect beach house look like? Or a tower a thousand storeys high? Map out a fantasy island.

We rely too much on words. It can be wonderfully meditative and soothing to forget the world and concentrate for a while on the process of marking the page: making a line, spreading a colour, seeing what happens, without worrying what the result will be.

Stationer y

48

Drawing as Therapy

FAS H I O N & AC C E S S O R I E S

KEY TRAITS Key Tags | 10 designs avail able | 51 x 19 mm 100% Microsurfaced Impact Acrylic

It can take a long time to understand who we might be – let alone explain ourselves to others.

They seem to have been made especially for us, so aptly do they convey our deeper orientations and concerns. When asked to explain who we are, rather than go in for long-winded autobiographical explanations, we might be tempted simply to hand over a word or two, as if to say with refreshing bluntness: ‘That is me.’ At other moments, when our identities seem a little confused to us,

we might welcome stumbling upon these words, which seem to remember our natures rather better than we can.

These key tags are outward symbols of inner knowledge. They are badges of honour won through the hard work of self-understanding. We should pick one or two that fit us, and then use them to showcase and celebrate our identities as we go about our daily lives.

Available from September 2015

Idiosyncratic | Contemplative | Conciliatory | Sane Forgiving | Melancholic | Perfectionist Lyrical | Philosophical | Guileless

Fashion & Accessories

Key Traits

52

Small: Pencil case

Large: Tote

Heavy-duty canvas pencil case| Yellow or Black with

Heavy-duty canvas tote | Khaki or Navy with white

stitched label | 100% cotton | 200 x 60 x 30 mm

print | 100% cotton | 370 x 400 mm

Available from September 2015

Available now

Medium: Pouch

X-Large: Luggage tag

Heavy-duty canvas Pouch | Blue or Orange with white

Colours TBC | 100% Leather | size TBC

print | 100% cotton | 266 x 180 mm

Available from October 2015

Available from September 2015

EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE A range of ways to carry your emotional baggage Pencil case | Pouch | Tote | Luggage tag

We are all damaged in diverse, stubborn and interesting ways: someone humiliated us a long time ago; we witnessed bitter rows between our parents; we had anxieties around self-worth fuelled by comparison with a high-achieving sibling; an early business venture ended in disaster; we have a tendency to obsessive independence that makes it hard to live with anyone else; we have a rebellious streak which seemed cute at sixteen but now gets in the way of working amicably with others…

It’s not possible to go through life without burdens of this kind. But it makes an enormous difference whether we know how to acknowledge them and whether we understand them. When we fail at this, we get defensive and bitter. We claim we’re

not lacking self-confidence, it’s just that other people are full of themselves. We insist we’re not envious; it’s that other people are greedy. We say we’re not rebellious, but the world is too conformist.

And we’re definitely not hard to live with; it’s just our partners who have turned out to be pathetic.

This is emotional baggage badly carried. At The School of L ife , we believe in trying to learn ways to be more deft about the damage we are burdened with: how to fathom it, how to set it in context and how to warn others of its existence in good time (when we are still calm). This collection celebrates one of the most glamorous projects any of us can undertake: learning how to carry our emotional baggage well.

Fashion & Accessories

54

Emotional Baggage

THE PHILOSOPHER’S JUMPER 100% Pure Merino fine knit crew neck jumper | Male and Female multiple sizes avail able | supporting booklet

The black jumper has taken a pride of place in the wardrobes of philosophical figures as diverse as Herbert Marcuse, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The Philosopher’s Jumper, designed in collaboration with Bella Freud, invites us to share in the philosophical life.

Fashion & Accessories

Philosopher’s Jumper

58

THE PHILOSOPHER’S SHOE Unisex slip-on shoe | Carli calf leather upper | Calf leather lining Wingtip brogue detailing | Embossed quote on sole edge Yellow heel pull tab & insock​ | Made in Italy

The Ancient Greek astronomer and philosopher Thales is remembered, not just for his theories on mathematics and nature, but for the tale that he was so busy gazing at the skies - puzzling over the mysteries of the stars - that he fell into a well. The

Fashion & Accessories

Philosopher’s Shoe

Philosopher’s Shoe, designed in collaboration with Oliver Sweeney, takes inspiration from Thales’ predicament, by reminding us of the ideal state: ‘head in the stars, feet on the ground’; a fundamental rule for life that is worth keeping front of mind (and foot).

HOME & GARDEN

COMFORT BLANKET 100% Cashmere woven bl anket 130 x 170 cm | Made in Inner Mongolia

R eassurance , Consolation, R etreat A comfort blanket understands. Sometimes our powers of reason and adult competence are not enough. There are obstacles that are too difficult, hurts that are too deep. We crumple. It’s not good ideas or clever advice we need at that point, it’s warmth, being held, the feeling of being able to hide. We need to retreat. It’s not the end. It’s a pause before a recovery.

We are generous to babies and small children when they are in crisis. We accept that they might be deeply upset simply because they are tired or have had too much excitement. They need to be quiet for a while. They need to be held and soothed.

It should not be an affront to our adult selves to admit that we continue to have such needs throughout our lives. A comfort blanket does not directly solve problems. We know that.

This beautifully-designed cashmere blanket helps you through those times when you need to retreat away from crisis. This comfort blanket helps us find a better frame of mind so that later on we are strong enough to get back out into the world and what we know is right and necessary.

Made from 100% cashmere, our suppliers reside in Inner Mongolia, where they source this naturally downy and thermal wool from the local goats. We have selected the softest and finest threads to provide comfort when it is needed most.

Home & Garden

62

Comfor t Blanket

TRANSITIONAL OBJECT: Donald sof t l ambs wool toy | 32 cm tall Assembled by hand in London Supporting booklet

The English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott developed the idea of a Transitional Object. He wanted to draw attention to the very important work done by children’s much-loved teddy bears.

At first a baby feels fused with the mother. But gradually a child will become independent, able to live successfully alone.

How does one manage this transition? A teddy bear can help by being a bit like the mother – a source of tenderness and sweetness and comfort.

And yet, it is really the child who gives the bear these qualities. So the bear is a lovely thing: a halfway house, a resting place between the utter

dependency of the baby and the emotional independence of the adult. But we don’t ever entirely resolve this problem. We are always, to some extent, in transition.

When we recognise that the demands of independence are getting a bit too much – when we’ve had to be too adult, too sensible, to reliable for too long – we need to let ourselves be dependent and insecure. Our Transitional Object, made in collaboration with Donna Wilson, is named Donald in honour of Mr Winnicott, the first person to think with appropriate depth about the value such a creature might have for us.

Home & Garden

64

Transitional Object

UTOPIA CANDLES Hand poured natural wa x candle | 35 Hr Burn time | Ceramic candle pot Visitor’s Guide booklet and box | 80 x 90 mm

Some of our best ideas come when we allow ourselves to imagine the world as we would ideally like it to be. Throughout history, people have designed utopias, perfect worlds that aren’t exactly real and yet that serve to illuminate real needs.

Contemplating utopias restores and reinvigorates us by helping us to focus on what things could, and might, one day be like.

Inside each beautifully-crafted jar, is a candle

whose subtly blended fragrance helps to evoke the perfect world described by: the architect Le Corbusier, a realm of elegance, lightness and speed; the American writer Henry David Thoreau, a realm of nature, beauty and harmony; Plato, a realm of reason, calm and order. Lighting the candle creates a moment in which we are able to reframe, and gain perspective over, some of the problems of our world today.

Home & Garden

66

Utopia Candles

A

A– City of Tomorrow T he scent of freshly cut grass with green pear, rose, lily, jasmine and balsam.

B

Elegance, Lightness, Speed

B– The Republic T he scent of war m spices with bergamot, mandarin, nutmeg, black pepper, cardamom, cumin and vetivert.

Reason, Calm, Order C– Walden T he scent of wild berries with citrus, geranium, cassis, amber and sandalwood.

Nature, Beauty, Har mony C

SEEDS OF VIRTUE NOTECARDS 5 greetings cards with envelope 161 x 114 mm | 5 Seed packets Printed gif t box with sleeve T wo Editions: Flowers & Herbs

Home & Garden

Seeds of Vir tue

Being virtuous sounds old-fashioned nowadays.

Yet goodness is, in fact, one of the most important qualities we can aspire to. We all need to develop positive yet challenging qualities like confidence, devotion, and hope in order to better connect to those we care about and accomplish the tasks we truly value. In order to cultivate these virtues, we need regular reminders of their dimensions and importance. These notecards are designed to give (the recipient) this kind of nudge. Each card displays a short contemplation on a different virtue, and is paired with a seed packet offering further botanical inspiration. As the flowers bloom, they serve as a daily prompt to revisit their corresponding virtuous quality, so that – ideally – we can grow alongside them.

68

FLOWERS Set INCLUDES: Primrose for Conf idence • L avender for Devotion Daisy for Hope • Poppy for Imagination Aster for L ove HERBS SET INCLUDES: T hyme for Courage • Fennel for Endurance Basil for Good Wishes • Sage for Wisdom Rosemary for Remembrance

PHILOSOPHICAL HONEY 3 x 110g Gl ass Jars of GREEK Honey Gif t Box | Supporting booklet

Not only is honey delicious, it is also food for the soul – connecting us with history and culture, as the best culinary experiences always do. Each jar is sourced from the birthplace of one of the great Greek philosophers and brings to mind their pointed and useful insights.

Honey is one of nature’s most seductive transformations. Nectar, which fed the Greek Gods, becomes the sweetest human food, thanks to the industry of bees as they fill the combs of their hives.

And in due homage to this productive, beautifully social and modest creature, The School of L ife is supporting the bee population.

These three fragrant honeys are sourced from the birthplaces of great Greek philosophers: Zeno of Cyprus: This smooth and creamy honey is collected by Cypriot bees in springtime on the rugged volcanic terrain near Mount Olympus.

Epicurus of Samos: This thick, rich honey hails from the island of Samos – officially the sunniest island in Greece – which lies near the coast of Turkey.

P lato of Athens: Perhaps the most refined of all Greek varieties, Athenian honey has a golden amber colour and an intense thyme scent.

Home & Garden

70

Philosophical Honey

IDEAL GUESTS Box set of 4 x pl acemats 290 x 215 x 5 mm corkboard Heat resistant to 110 C (225 F )

If you could choose anyone throughout the history of ideas to attend your ideal dinner party, who would you choose and why? The School of L ife has put together a selection of the most thoughtprovoking and entertaining guests to help inspire scintillating conversation. Spanning a range of disciplines, you and your guests are encouraged to take on colourful personas and delve deep into topics such as sex, politics, religion, climate change, art, design and entrepreneurship.

Set 1 Rachel CARSON Frida KAHLO Sigmund FREUD Niccolo MACHIAVELLI Set 2 Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT Coco CHANEL Oscar WILDE BUDDHA

Available from September 2015.

Home & Garden

Ideal Guests

72

cooking as therapy TEA TOWEL 100% Woven Cot ton | 500 x 700 mm

Cooking might seem like a dreadful chore. But carefully attended to, it is perhaps one of the most therapeutic things we can do daily. We cook food for far more than physical fuel; it always carries a mood, a message, even a philosophy. We make spicy curry when we have a dull day at work. We remind ourselves to simplify by grilling up some fish, dressed with only a lemon. We use soup to heal when we are sick (in body or soul). Special foods connect us to old memories and previous selves.

Preparing the meal is meditative. While chopping vegetables, we must focus intently on one thing alone. The house becomes filled with warmth, the smell of the oven, the sound of the boiling broth.

We appreciate how much small, inexpensive things like fresh apples or browning butter contribute to our happiness.

Most of all, we usually cook for others, and this act is one of the simplest, yet most profound expressions of love. It reminds us who is really impor-

tant, who we should more closely attend to. In this way, cooking offers us something profound: it provides us with the ritual we forget we need now that religion has declined. Food regularly gathers us together with the people that matter, it marks the changes of the seasons, it helps us conjure up and share emotions. We need to find ways to replace the religiously choreographed meals (Christian bread and wine, Jewish lamb shank and horseradish, Buddhist tea) with new ritual foods, to help us regularly order and nurture our lives, minds and relationships.

It shouldn’t just be another task before bed. Ideally, our time in the kitchen should help us reflect on the day, open up to one another, and reconnect to our selves. Cooking should not only give sustenance for our body but – like good art or music – it should nourish our soul.

Home & Garden

74

Cooking as Therapy

Available from September 2015.

CLEANING AS THERAPY SOAP | Tea towel SOAP: 230gm | Made in Portugal Avail able in t wo fragrances Cil antro & LimE | Sea Breeze tea Towel: 100% Woven Cot ton | 500 x 700 mm

One of the most neglected and most therapeutic of pleasures is that of cleaning, either oneself or a bit of the world. To wash can be the simplest – and yet the most properly uplifting – of daily rituals. It’s not for nothing that ancient cultures from the Romans to the Japanese have practised ritual bathing; it’s a way to move on and to allow room for renewal. For a few precious moments, you gently cleanse not only your skin, but your mind as well. The purification can happen at every level.

Soaking in water, the minor irritations and disappointments that plague life feel less pressing; they

Home & Garden

Cleaning as Therapy

too can drain away. A fresh scent is sometimes all it takes to see the people who have hurt you in a kinder, more forgiving light. A wash is an agent of hope. You realise that it won’t be so bad after all, now that you’ve cleansed away some of your own worry, anger and fear.​ In a few minutes, you’ll turn to face the day with a fresh outlook.

It’s often the simple rituals that can best help us approach the world with a little more confidence and serenity.

Available from September 2015.

76

A R T & C O L L EC T I B L E S

IMPERFECTION POT 100 x 100 mm ceramic pot Wooden crate 120 x 120 mm Supporting booklet

Inspired by the Japanese tradition of wabi sabi, which finds beauty in humble, imperfect and easily overlooked places, this Imperfection Pot was made with a free hand which has resulted in the appearance of subtle flaws. Rather than ruin it, these imperfections are the key to its charm. They encapsulate – and promote more widely in life – an attitude of generosity and acceptance.

To contemplate an object and to live with it is to let a little of its character seep into our own souls.

If only briefly, we become more like it. This pot, designed by Adam Buick, has a traditional celadon glaze of greyish green, associated with calm in buddhism. It is tranquil and modest, as if it is untroubled by aspiration and content to be only what it is.

Inconsistencies in the pot’s form and finish are intentional. It is designed to help us in the tricky but necessary task of accepting and even learning to appreciate our imperfections – as well as

Ar t & Collectibles

Imper fection Pot

the flaws of others. The imperfect pot provides a counter to our yearning for perfection, which can be relentless. The pot is something to turn to for support and inspiration when our unreasonably high expectations of ourselves and those around us threaten to get out of control.

The Imperfection Pot was designed by Adam Buick, a Ceramic Artist based in West Wales.

His work can be found in public and private collections around the world. The shapes he throws are based on Moon Jars (dal hang-ari), an ancient Korean form, originally made from plain white porcelain. The Moon Jar represents the epitome of the austere Confucian virtues of purity, honesty and modesty. Adam’s work explores the human experience of landscape, and he uses the form of the Moon Jar as the basic composition in his work. With every piece he strives to find beauty in imperfection, a reflection of the landscape around him.

80

MEMENTO MORI Gl ass Paperweight 5 x Designs 60 / 70 / 80 mm Paper covered box | Booklet

For centuries, artists produced ‘memento mori’, works of art that would remind their viewers of death and usually featured a skull or an hourglass.

The point of these works wasn’t to make people despair, but to help them use the thought of death to focus on the real priorities.

Vivid reminders of mortality and the transient nature of life put our prosaic obsessions into question. When measured against the finality of death, the true insignificance of some of our worries is

Ar t & Collectibles

Memento Mori

emphasised and we’re given an opportunity to feel a little braver about what we really want and feel.

The School of L ife have created a collection of glass paperweights to serve as our own, modern versions of a ‘memento mori’. These objects are both pleasing to look at and should serve as daily inspirations to tackle our most important task: to live in accordance with our true talents and interests and to make the most of whatever precious moments we may have left.

82

Algae This is a highly magnified image of a single-celled diatom algae. It is one of the tiniest and oldest living things on the planet. The naturalist Charles Darwin wrote about it to emphasise an idea that remains momentous: that we humans evolved from other, simpler species. At the time, this was taken to be dangerously demeaning. But it’s a hugely liberating lesson. Often we expect too much from ourselves and others. We forget our origins as smaller, hairier primates and (before that) simple clusters of cells, like these algae. We need to climb down, and recall our mortality, our frailty, our terrible limitations and our weaknesses – which are tied to our deep ancestry as tiny things at the bottom of the sea.

Sand There are (very roughly) seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains of sand on the earth. The most common constituent of sand is silica, the second is aragonite, which has been created, over the past half billion years, from the crushed remains of various forms of life, like coral and shellfish. Pick up some grains, put them under a microscope and whole worlds appear. In certain strands of Zen Buddhism, sages train themselves to be content to stare for many hours at only a few grains, a symbol of their capacity to pay due attention to the neglected wonders of existence. We too should be content to look closely at grains in a spirit of modesty and humility – and acknowledge that we are, from a sufficient perspective, nothing more substantial than such grains and yet no less interesting or complex for that.

Moth Eubaphe mendica, also known as the Beggar, is a small yellow moth of fragile appearance and almost translucent wings. In her famous essay, ‘The Death of the Moth’, the English writer Virginia Woolf describes the final moments of just such a moth. It is trapped against a pane of glass. It cannot understand its predicament. It keeps trying to get through, but its energies are limited, its knowledge is too small and its lifespan is desperately short. To be touched by this is to be touched – ultimately – by our own similar fate. We too have brief existences which we risk (so very easily) in hopeless, mistaken efforts; we too are misled, fatally, by things that we think are attractive, and for us as well, death comes far sooner than we would like.

Sea Many of the obstacles we face in our lives are rather like the waves of the sea: relentless, bleak, repetitive and, ultimately, not responsive to our wishes or longings. This is not a cruel fact about one’s own predicament; it is a basic premise of the human condition. Therefore, one should not bring unreasonable expectations and be continually shocked and dismayed when life does not answer to our demands. We should learn to accept all we cannot change and face it with a degree of heroism and Stoic strength, as a sailor battling the waves might. We can also, in the midst of our struggles, appreciate the beauty and grandeur of what we’re up against.

Stars Globular clusters like this one are dense bunches of hundreds of thousands of stars formed over 13 billion years ago. This image, taken by the Hubble telescope, says nothing directly about what happened today at work or in our relationships.

Its function is to make us feel small. That’s normally unpleasant, but to be made to feel small by something so much more majestic and powerful than we are has something redeeming and enhancing about it. The image is sombre, rather than sad: calming, but not despair inducing. And in that condition of mind, we are left better equipped to deal with the intense, intractable and particular problems and griefs we have to deal with in our few years on this planet.

Ar t & Collectibles

Memento Mori

84

BO O KS

Toolkit FOR LIFE t welve books avail able individually or in sets AVAIL ABLE in t wo editions

Books

Toolkit for Life

A series of essential guides for everyday living: intelligent, rigorous, well-written self-help books, put together by some of the leading minds in the field. In these, we systematically examine some of the great issues of life – work, sex, money, emotional maturity, digital life and changing the world.

Available individually from Pan Macmillan, or as a Toolkit For Life set exclusively from The School of L ife.

88

LiFe Lessons a set oF six PaPerback books 113 x 185 x 74 mm aVaiL abLe indiViduaLLy or as a set with hardcoVer sLiPcase

Books

Life Lessons

A series of short books featuring big ideas from great thinkers. The Life Lessons series takes a great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary everyday dilemmas. These books teach us how wise voices from the past have urgently important and inspiring things to tell us.

90

LIBRARY for LIFE TRUTH & LOVE T wo setS of four hardback books 120 x 200 x 85 mm Linen bound with foil graphics

At The School of L ife we believe literature has the power to transform lives and that quality will always matter more than quantity. Each box set in our Library for Life collection contains our pick of essential classic and modern texts on a given theme. They’re our favourite lifetime companions and guides.

TRUTH This collection gathers the ideas of four very different thinkers, each with a unique and clear-eyed vision of the world and includes: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Books

Librar y for Life

The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly Straw Dogs by John Gray Collected Maxims by La Rochefoucauld LOVE Follow four thinkers as they try to understand love, to reason with it - and, ultimately, fall at its feet. The set includes: On Love by Stendhal Essays in Love by Alain de Botton A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes Conditions of Love by John Armstrong

92

CONTACTS www.theschooloflife.com Twitter: @theschooloflife Facebook: theschooloflifelondon Instagram: theschooloflifelondon

WHOLESALE ENQUIRIES: Polite Company (retail products): Jack Jackson jack@politecompany.co.uk www.politecompany.co.uk +44 (0) 1625 560055 PanMacmillan (How To and Life Lessons series): Toby Watson Key Account Manager + 44 (0)7990 887282 t.watson@macmillan.co.uk Phaidon (Art as Therapy): Dan Groenewald dgroenewald@phaidon.com + 44 (0) 20 7843 1206 PRESS ENQUIRIES: David Gorrod, Seen PR david@seenpr.com +44 (0) 1273 722469 | +44 (0) 70801 697792 BESPOKE PRODUCT ENQUIRIES: Emma Gordon, The School of Life emma@theschooloflife.com +44 (0) 7876204024

th eschoolo flife.com