How many of us, at the reception of a hotel, have not been able to resist the temptation to play that companion put there only to tempt us, to force us to feel like children ones again? Then that pitiful gaze and the circumstantial smile of the receptionist, on whose thoughts we better to overlook.
The ringing of the bell is a call to attention and, at least once in our life, it has appeared to carry out this task: at school, in church or at work. The cinema often reserves a close-up for it to make the moment more dramatic: old service bells in the manor houses that ring in unison, or shaken by the arm of a sullen judge, while he tries to put order in the courtroom.
One of the industries that, in my opinion, has contributed most to the aesthetics of this simple object is DEPONIRT. A French foundry which, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, was able to produce small wonders. We appreciate the love for detail and a deliberate pursuit of beauty.
Even if hotel doorbells were created for a niche market and with a specific function, how many of us wouldn’t want one?
It would certainly be the most useless object in the house but, you know, useless things are the ones that give us the most satisfaction.
MY READINGS
The expression WITH BELLS ON brings to my mind the spirit of a truly hilarious book: Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), an adventurous humorous novel by Jerome K. Jerome of 1889. Even more than a hundred years later, British humor does not lose its strength.
