Discovering Design Through Dough and Beyond
I’m just dough.
Yes, you read this correctly —dough, as in the alchemy of water and flour and a bit of everything else. It all started with Bisquick baking mix, learning to judge just the right amount of milk to add so the dough cleaned the sides of the bowl. Adding more milk made batter for cakes, cutting in more butter turned it into pie crust. I was endlessly entertained.
Dough was the true beginning of my education in design. Yes, you read that right too. This designer started in dough!
Design originates in a problem to be solved. You might say dough solves the problem of hunger. When I was a little girl, dough solved my problem of play. If I had time on my hands, I had dough on them too.
By the time I was five, making dough had become my favorite craft, and the kitchen my favorite studio.
As dough fed my insatiable desire to experiment —mixing, shaping, cutting and swirling it in a zillion different ways, it also trained my eye to recognize the qualities of a properly designed kitchen.
Pause. How in the world did my mother put up with all those messy kitchen experiments?!
Perhaps she just knew they would lead me somewhere. Somewhere both practical and sublime. And she was right.
I’ve expanded my palette beyond the white, sticky dough by introducing fruits, nuts, vegetables, meats, cheeses, herbs, and spices. Experimenting with all the colors, flavors, textures and aromas, I’ve been offered adventure, the occasional failure, but most often success. Cooking has become a daily practice of design.
To this day I love being in the kitchen. Kitchens are design studios in the truest sense of the word. They are labs of experimentation for new recipes. They are work horses for shoveling out food to feed a growing family. They are venues of entertainment. They are places for friends to gather for milk, coffee, tea and wine.
Kitchens feed our bodies, and kitchens feed our souls.
Which is really, what interior design is all about, feeding body and soul. Creating places to cook, eat, sleep and gather in ways so they become more than the sum of their parts. Spaces both practical and sublime. And homes, like dough, can be shaped and decorated in a zillion different ways.
Dough was potential. It was magic. It delighted my senses! Dough was something to shape and something to share.
This is the story of how this designer started in dough.