How did so much beauty and ingenuity come to light in the everyday objects of rural life in Portugal? How did these objects manage to harmonize functionality and formal perfection so skillfully? "The Hard Life" by Jasper Morrison is an illustrated book of photographs of objects from the collection of the National Ethnological Museum in Lisbon, Portugal.
The book explores how generations of trial and error, individual craftsmanship and the instinct to extract the essentials with minimal means produced objects that made life worth living and meaningful in a pre-industrial society. The objects photographed and described by designer Jasper Morrison are captivating in both their beauty and their exemplary function for design in its purest form.
"The Hard Life" continues Morrison's homage to the everyday and opens up a new perspective on his design philosophy. It is a tribute to the beauty of antique utilitarian objects.

Author(s): Jasper Morrison
Design: Jasper Morrison and Integral Lars Müller
22 × 30 cm, 8 ½ × 11 ¾ in
208 pages, 188 illustrations
hardback
2017, 978-3-03778-514-0
Text English