The Need for a Dragon

Remember how I said that it was easy to decide how to refinish those green nightstands?

Well, I jinxed it.

You may have heard talk of "creative flow", a condition in which we are utterly consumed by our process and we achieve results without conscious effort.

This has been more of a "creative framp" a condition in which I am frustrated by my efforts to make something that I can't quite decide on.

For those who don't follow me on Instagram, let me give you a little background on the piece that has been causing me so much confusion.

I found a dresser at a local furniture auction. It had the shape of an Art Deco piece. I was excited to create a really bold and graphic design in the Art Deco style. But then there was some carving at the top of the piece that looked decidedly un-Art Deco. Maybe more Art Nouveau. Perhaps I could go more organic with the shapes?

After hauling it back to my workshop, I found this old piece of paper in a drawer:

I tried crowd sourcing the translation online and took it to the helpful ladies at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, but the most anyone could tell me was that it was a poem about feelings, written in an old Japanese script that most people can't read any more. The mystery deepened!

Fortunately, my husband had a contact in Japan who just happened to know the genius who once wrote a computer program to use artificial intelligence translate this old classic cursive Japanese. A few days later we received this poem:

It was accompanied by a reference to a website that said, "This is the song of His Majesty ... in 1945, that is, the year of the defeat. What was the will of His Majesty who wrote this song? When we workship this great song, we feel that we hear a tragic tune from this word-for-word, which is probably no more. In each word of "Kanume," "Kanfu," "Shimoya," "Moon" and "Hiroma," you can see the desoate world as far as the eye can see, where the pain of the crowd freezes as it is."

Wow. Now this Deco-Nouveau dresser had an Asian mournful soul. How on earth would I make this all make sense and do justice to the piece?

Much staring at the dresser ensued.

This continued until one morning when I was sipping (English instant - I know, it's coffee blasphemy) coffee in the kind of dream state which happens daily until the caffeine clears my head. Next to the coffee granules is a calendar. The calendar said it was coming up on St. George's Day (April 23rd).

St. George is the patron saint of England, but unlike St. Patrick's Day for the Irish, barely anyone in England can tell you when St. George's Day is, let alone celebrate it. This in itself, is very English.

As my (very Californian) husband reached for the oat milk, I resolved to do something about dragons. St George is famous for killing a dragon.

St George and the Dragon

We need more dragons on furniture, I thought. Then the caffeine kicked in, the school run was upon me and I forgot all about it.

It turns out that St George was trying to tell me something. That dresser needed a Japanese dragon.

As I did some research I discovered that Japanese dragons are often shape shifters. This seemed just right for my Deco-Nouveau fence-sitting friend. And as I read more about Japanese dragons, I discovered that emperors are said to be their descendents. Perhaps I could pay homage to the emperor who wrote the poem by featuring a dragon on the dresser.

And so, I have been working on dragon designs. I have a couple of videos up on Instagram (@foundbybashforddesign) where you can see some sped-up sneak peaks into all this dragoning. Of course, my lovely email newsletter friends (that's you) will be the first to see the full reveal!

Until then, a belated Happy St. George's Day to you all!

Sarah