A Black Lacquer Triangle and a Glass Sphere
I was looking for something structural. A mirror and a lamp had already found their way into the entryway, both genuinely 80s, both hard-won, and neither one had a companion yet. What I wanted was a very specific register, the kind of postmodern glam I used to catch in late 80s movies, not the wicker and earth tones most people picture when they hear the decade, but something sharper. Black lacquer instead of oak. Hard angles and glossy surfaces instead of soft edges. A single object with commanding presence. That's the trouble with this particular strain of the decade. I didn't see much of it even then, and finding it intact now is harder still. The lacquer cracks. The glass chips. What's left rarely turns up whole, and almost never turns up as a set.
The triangle turned up first, glossy black, but sitting alone it read as unfinished. Something was missing and I didn't know what yet.
Then the ball. Black glass, no chips, no cracks, the kind of find that doesn't happen twice in one afternoon. I set it in the triangle's hollow without thinking much about it, still scanning the booth for whatever came next, and when I looked back down, the pairing was obvious. Two objects that had nothing to do with each other an hour earlier, suddenly the only combination that made sense.
It made no functional sense. A sphere balanced in a dish, structural and pointless at once. But that's the register I was looking for. Beautiful and slightly absurd, built to be looked at.
The ball wouldn't sit still, so a clear display ring holds it inside the triangle without glue or damage to either piece.
It sits on the entryway console now, alongside an 80s lamp and a brass bird in flight. I went looking for one very specific object and never found it. What I found instead were two unrelated pieces that, together, gave me exactly what I'd been looking for. Sometimes the thing I'm searching for isn't waiting to be found whole. The interesting part is recognizing it when the pieces are sitting separately in front of me.
