A Refined Curatorial

He wasn’t describing a mood. He was describing a diagnosis, one he believed could kill. For two centuries after him, physicians across Europe and America recorded nostalgia as a cause of death.

A Refined Curatorial has never quite made grammatical sense.

There is supposed to be another word after it.

For years, there wasn’t one.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if that was a mistake.

Taste lives somewhere between knowledge and intuition. Knowledge can sharpen it. Exposure can expand it. Money can give us greater access to the things that express it. But none of those things necessarily produces taste.

Jerry Buss bought the Lakers in 1979 and understood immediately that the game was only part of what people were paying for. Forty-six years and two sales later, the team belongs to Bob Iger. The team is what changed hands. It isn't what I'm having trouble with.

It feels like every week there’s another club. Running, reading, coffee, ceramics, wine. Maybe the activity is only part of the reason. We want somewhere to go, someone to meet there, and eventually, a reason to come back.

Inspired by Salvador Dalí's melting clocks, the Exaequo Softwatch turned surrealism into something you could wear. What it asks about time is harder to shake.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: where we’ve been, what we’ve been building, and what happened while A Refined Curatorial was quiet. Somewhere between bottles of wine, Friday evenings, new friendships and a growing community, the world around this publication kept growing.

As life becomes faster, smarter, and more disposable, old things continue to pull us back. From records and watches to worn denim and film cameras, our fascination with the past may be less about nostalgia than the stories, rituals, and traces of life that objects carry with them.