Elsa Peretti

Good design for the home should be universal. A house should be like old shoes, comfortable, like a good friend... The Japanese aesthetic is important to me. Very organic. They have a sense of the weight of the thing: very balanced.

I don't have the feeling that I need to add a lot to my collection, because I have an incredibly wide range of things. This is a part of the secret of my things, that they are still valid. When I feel a need, I do something more.

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all.