We speak about taste as though it arrives on its own.
As though one day you simply know — what to choose, what to leave, what feels right.
But think back further.
There was a home. A way things were arranged. An object that was handled carefully, while others were not. A moment when someone paused in front of something beautiful, and you noticed the pause before you understood why.
You were not being taught. Nothing was explained.
And yet, something was transferred.
Taste begins this way — not in instruction, but in atmosphere. In the quiet hierarchy of what is valued. In understanding, before you have words for it, that some things are chosen and some things are merely acquired.
Over time, these observations organise into instinct.
You begin to feel proportion before you can name it. You develop an unease around excess, a comfort in resolution. You recognise when something has been considered, and when it hasn’t.
This is not self-made. It is inherited.
Legacy, in its truest sense, is not a transfer of objects. It is a calibration of the eye. A shaping of instinct. A way of seeing that was given to you so quietly, you eventually mistook it for your own.
Which, in the end, is exactly what it has become.
