The Discernment of Taste

We speak about good taste as though it were something one either possesses or does not.

Someone has an eye. Another person has impeccable taste. A room is tasteful; an object is not.

The language makes taste sound instinctive, perhaps even inherited — an inexplicable ability to recognise what is beautiful.

But taste is more complicated than instinct.

It can be formed.

It can be challenged.

And, perhaps most importantly, it can be refined.

Taste Is Not the Same as Preference

To say that taste can be developed does not mean that everyone should eventually arrive at the same conclusions.

Quite the opposite.

Preference is personal.

You may love an exuberant Baroque interior and dislike a perfectly proportioned Modernist one. You may be drawn to polished bronze rather than raw timber, ornament rather than restraint, surrealism rather than simplicity.

There is nothing to correct in that.

Discernment begins somewhere else.

It is the ability to look at something you would never choose for yourself and still recognise whether it has been conceived and made well.

We can dislike an object and understand its importance.

We can admire the craftsmanship of something we would never place in our own home.

And we can love something while acknowledging that it may not be particularly good.

That distance between liking and judging is where taste becomes interesting.

Learning to Look

The eye develops through exposure.

Museums matter. Galleries matter. Architecture matters. Books, travel, interiors, exhibitions, workshops, auction previews and conversations with people who know more than we do all contribute to a visual vocabulary.

The more we see, the more comparisons become possible.

At first, we might simply know that we are attracted to a particular chair.

Later, we begin to notice its proportions.

Then its joinery.

Then the relationship between its material and form.

Eventually, perhaps, we recognise where the designer sits within a longer history of similar ideas.

The object has not changed.

Our ability to see it has.

This is one reason connoisseurship has traditionally depended so heavily upon looking. Knowledge can be learned from books, but the eye requires encounters.

You have to see things.

Preferably many things.

Preferably good things and bad things.

The contrast is useful.

Knowing the Rules — and Knowing When They Don't Matter

Education can make taste more sophisticated.

It can also make it terribly obedient.

Once we learn the names, periods, movements and accepted hierarchies of design, there is a danger of simply learning what we are supposed to admire.

The famous chair.

The important architect.

The approved designer.

The piece everyone at the fair has already photographed.

Knowledge should sharpen judgement, not replace it.

Some of the most exciting moments in collecting occur when something catches the eye before its credentials are known.

An unfamiliar name.

An unusual material.

A piece that seems slightly strange.

Something that does not immediately fit within what we already understand to be good.

The educated eye should still be capable of surprise.

Price Is a Particularly Unreliable Teacher

One of the easiest mistakes is to confuse value with price.

They often intersect. They are not the same.

An object may be expensive because its material is rare, its production extraordinarily difficult, its maker celebrated or its availability limited.

It may also simply be expensive because the market has decided that it can be.

Likewise, something relatively modest in price may contain extraordinary thinking and skill.

Knowing the price before looking at the object can distort judgement. The number begins to tell us how seriously we should take what is in front of us.

It is useful, occasionally, to reverse the process.

Look first.

Ask questions.

Then discover the price.

Would your judgement change?

If it does, why?

The Confidence to Choose the Unexpected

Discernment eventually produces something more valuable than knowledge: confidence.

Not the confidence of believing one's taste is superior to everyone else's, but the confidence to make a choice without requiring universal approval.

This is particularly important in interiors.

Rooms assembled entirely from objects that are already culturally validated can be beautiful, but they can also feel strangely impersonal.

The memorable ones often contain an interruption.

Something humorous.

Something excessive.

Something inherited.

Something slightly peculiar.

Something whose presence makes perfect sense to the person who lives there and perhaps nobody else.

That tension gives a room life.

Taste does not require everything to agree.

Sometimes it requires knowing precisely what disagreement the room can hold.

The Importance of Saying No

If taste involves choosing, discernment involves refusing.

This may be its least glamorous but most important expression.

The contemporary world offers an almost infinite supply of beautiful things. Every fair, platform, showroom and social feed introduces another object worth wanting.

The challenge is no longer access.

It is editing.

A discerning collection is defined as much by what was left out as by what was acquired.

This is particularly true when building a home over time. Empty space need not be treated as a problem waiting to be filled. Waiting for the right object can be more rewarding than finding an adequate one immediately.

To collect slowly is to allow standards to evolve.

It is also to accept that not every beautiful thing needs to belong to us.

Taste Without Rules

So what, ultimately, is good taste?

Perhaps the question itself is too rigid.

Taste changes across cultures, generations and individuals. What one period dismisses, another rediscovers. Ornament disappears and returns. Materials fall in and out of favour. Designers neglected in their own lifetimes are reconsidered decades later.

There can be no permanent checklist.

Discernment is therefore less about knowing the correct answer than knowing how to look.

To recognise craftsmanship without worshipping it.

To understand history without becoming trapped by it.

To appreciate rarity without confusing it with quality.

To notice price without allowing it to dictate value.

To know what others consider important while remaining capable of choosing something else.

At House of Khatt, curation begins with this kind of looking.

We are interested in objects with conviction — whether elegant or eccentric, restrained or theatrical, immediately beautiful or slightly difficult.

Because developing taste should not make the world narrower.

It should allow us to see more within it.

And perhaps the surest sign of discernment is not knowing what everyone else should choose.

It is knowing why you chose what you did.