The Met Archives, a Sneak Peak

8/14/2025

On occasion I feel like I’ll never have a new idea again.

I think this is called creative block. I tend to spiral when I get to that space, and get very depressed. For real. This said, I have found a really good, really specific solution - doing a keyword search for “snakes” on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection archive.

One of the object you can find using “snakes”

This anti-spiraling technique might work with other collection’s online catalogues, but I doubt it would be as satisfying - the Met’s site is so dang navigable.

Snake vessels

It’s good design all the way down.

It’s amazing to me the incredible design work that has existed throughout the Anthropocene - the very earliest objects that humans have an incredible aesthetics and ergonomics! So many of the objects could have been made yesterday.

A personal favorite discoveryI’m deeply inspired by this naming convention

I try to narrow the aperture of my brain, and be generally inspired rather than specifically inspired. I really don’t want to simply be recreating the things that speak to me - although I’m sure more of this ancient work seeps into my design vocabulary than I know. Seeing these objects opens my mind to different ways of looking at use, material and context; I’m seeing how things work in cultures as far from my own as they can be, in both time and space. The amount of knowledge and insight to be gathered from this is immense. Even without copying form or borrowing techniques, I still have a huge path of ideation opened up.

Check out the Met’s site. It’s a corner of the Miasma well worth exploring.

A new hand mirror.

As a member of the Elite Club of Make Nice Newsletter subscribers you get access to exclusive, never before seen work. Why? I’m supposed to keep work under my hat, for PR reasons, but have such excitement to share images that I need a release valve.

That said, please don’t circulate any images here without touching base with me, the entity Make Nice, first. Likely you’ll receive a “please no,” but who knows - you may be reading this in the distant future, long after any possible consequence has passed. Maybe even after the great unwinding, or the Fall, or whatever we’ll call it - in which case I would be ok with you circulating the images. Just ask though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Descrying Mirror

Obsidian, 6 x 6 x 3

I try to make things that look like they already existed, but are just now being discovered. This, a void object - minimal, futuristic and ancient, it lives on the counter of a Ridley Scott designed occultist jewelry store. It has an opaque use case: scrying, divination, Bloody Mary manifestations - or its just a mirror.

Made entirely of naturally occurring obsidian, it yields a very dark reflection.