What is the role of function-less objects? Is there a cultural justification for purely decorative things? Are they designed to provoke an emotional response? Are they designed with a certain idea of beauty in mind? Do they remind us the wealth of local craftsmen and women and their self-taught mastery of the wood chisel and the brush? I noticed this woodcarving adorning a bare tabletop at the Costarrican house where I am staying. There are other figurines similar to it: a cock, a hen and a little mermaid. All of them equally colorful, all carved from blocks of níspero, a local dark hardwood. Níspero wood is used in construction due to its extreme hardness, its resistance to pests and its imperviousness. Níspero wood is not only hard to carve, but also very expensive. So I guess these function-less figures are relatively valuable objects in their own way, both in terms of the material and the manual labor involved. How long would have taken to carve and paint the froggy? Would the carver manufacture these souvenirs as a hobby, or would he/she be a full-time artisan? Would he be able to eke a living out of this? Function-less knick-knacks are in every household of every culture. They are all equally trivial, even offensive in their blatant triviality. Yet they have a role in most domestic (and work) environments; that is still a mystery to anyone interested in the role that objects play in our lives.
