Dr Wamuwi Mbao: In praise of useless things

The few regrets I have tend to surface at 2am. It’s that sticky part of the night when the untroubled slumber and the rest of us replay that day we passed up that fantastic statement piece. I’m currently rueing the original orange Artemide Nesso for which someone wanted R700. There’s usually a sound reason we don’t part with our dosh, but occasionally I can’t help inventorying my mental warehouse of should-haves, to take stock of whether my current choices have turned out as well as they might have.

For the most part, I’m satisfied that the ghost chairs I passed on would now throw me into a fatal cringe, and I’m glad that I put a boring rectilinear bookshelf in that corner instead of a Gufram cactus. Lately, however, I’ve been seized by an unshakeable longing for Ettore Sottsass’s Carlton.

If you’ve never seen this marvellously strange object before, just picture what would happen if Chappell Roan were a bookshelf. You must understand that, as someone who lives in the ink-and-paper world, I’m constantly in want of places to put the books. There are currently books on every horizontal surface I can see from where I’m writing this. Boris Johnson’s ver- bose autobiography is making the dining table creak like an old galleon. The most recent Sally Rooney and Shubnum Khan’s latest page-turner are tottering on a pile that threatens the wellbeing of unsuspecting passersby.

Restraint is something most of us were socialised to regard as a desirable quality. It’s why you don’t do a Steve McQueen-style wheelspin when the toll gate opens, and why you ate only two of those baked whatsits you’re currently thinking about. The markers of restraint — “tasteful”, “discreet”, “elegant” — are all over how we think about the human environment. Restraint pares things down with the promise that what remains will do us good.

Think of how every Expensive Good Thing — from your Fieldbar to your Apple life sustainer — takes Dieter Rams’s “Weniger, aber besser” (“Less, but better”) dictum and elevates it to a first principle. Excess, on the other hand, is often a vexing matter. Because we’ve been taught that it’s good practice for everything to earn its keep, we tend to look askance at objects that don’t prioritise function over everything else. But the chap who designed the Carlton — Ettore Sottsass — created an entire design movement based on the idea that the things with which you fill your home don’t need to conform to the dictates of restraint.

The ragtag covey of designers he fronted called themselves the Memphis Group and, though their kitsch star didn’t burn very long, they produced an array of fabulous and much-coveted design classics that are an antidote to the dull ubiquity of the uniformly minimalist. There’s something deeply compelling about objects that tread their own path: the power to do your own thing (when you’re not an over-entitled techno weirdo from Pretoria) isn’t something to be taken lightly.

Our world is increasingly instrumentalised in the service of efficiency, and this broad drive comes at the expense of that unique joy-bringing will to be different. In a world where everything bends towards inexpressive functionalism, there’s a pleasing power in things that insist on existing for their own sake. You can spot evidence of this contrary spirit everywhere in the world, if you know what to look for: the swoop of a Lexus taillight in traffic, or the Gaetano Pesce Up 5 chair I glimpsed in a Cape Town showroom one bright afternoon.

The other day, I was reading an article about Gufram — maker of the non-functional cactus that decorates my warehouse of missed opportunities — which had released a monochrome variation. This, on an initial reading, seemed like a capitulation to conformity. After all, the entire point is that it’s meant to be thought-provoking and obtrusive.

The cactus is as tall as a human and, in the original’s bright green, it’s a powerful statement piece. But, ever true to its mandate of radical design, Gufram’s intention with the (wait for it) Boring Cactus is that it should comment on the washed-out nature of modern décor. It’s a clever way to shake down those made anxious by brightly coloured objects, but I’ll take mine in What Is That? Green, thanks.

From the March edition of Wanted, 2025