The “Picasso” reality check

I once heard a story about an art student who challenged his teacher: “Learning art is meaningless. It’s about feeling. If I study the rules, my originality will be stunted.” The teacher replied quietly, “Can you draw like Picasso? Of course not. He was a genius, and we are not. Originality is a gift granted only to geniuses. For the rest of us, we study to understand them, hoping to crawl just a little bit closer to their level.”

When I first heard this story in my early twenties, I was a cheeky young man. I retorted to my boss, “Wanting to be unique is such a cliché. Doesn’t that make you the least unique person in the room?” My boss didn’t get angry. He just smiled—that same quiet, deep smile—and said, “It is human nature to want to be different. I can’t blame people for that.” Now that I manage my own team, his face often haunts me when I’m dealing with my own “cheeky” juniors who think they’ve reinvented the wheel.

The Mozart confession

We often think of originality as creating something from a void, like a god. But even Mozart, arguably the most “original” mind in history, reportedly said, “I have never created an original melody.” Friedrich Nietzsche, the German intellectual giant, had perhaps the best definition: “Originality is to see something that is as yet without a name; that is as yet impossible to designate, even though it stares us in the face.” It’s not a “creation from scratch”; it’s a “re-discovery through mixing.”

You can apply this same logic to the world’s most successful innovations. The iPhone, Uber, ChatGPT—none of these were “new” inventions in the sense of discovering a new element. They were all built from components that were already staring us in the face, redefined and combined from a different perspective. Of course, this shift in perspective is the hardest part. Our brains are biologically designed to process most daily activities unconsciously to save energy. Breaking that “power-saving mode” to see the obvious from a new angle is the ultimate intellectual struggle.

1,500 years of “remixing”

Sometimes people look at our furniture at CondeHouse and say, “This looks a bit Scandinavian.” In the past, I might have felt defensive. Now, I realize that discusión is meaningless.

True originality in furniture doesn’t come from ignoring the past—it comes from the collision of cultures. Our furniture is a 1,500-year-old “remix.” It is the meeting point between Western functionalism and Japanese woodworking skills that have been refined since the era of ancient shrines. We didn’t “invent” the chair, but we broke our brain’s power-saving mode to find a specific way to blend the forest’s soul with modern life. We aren’t trying to be “unique.” We are just staring at the wood until we see the value that has been staring us in the face all along.

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If originality is about breaking the brain’s “power-saving mode” to see a new combination, then the Hatsune Miku Art Chair is the ultimate intellectual wake-up call. It’s a “remix” of a virtual pop star and ancient Hokkaido timber—a combination that was staring us in the face, yet required a radical shift in perspective to designate. Like the iPhone or ChatGPT, it doesn’t try to be “unique” for the sake of a trend; it simply gives a name to a new value. Why settle for furniture that lets your brain stay on autopilot when you can own a piece that redefines the boundaries of reality?

Ready to see the “unnameable” for yourself? Click the banner below to explore the true originality of the Art Chair collection.

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