Naming the Objects
We live among objects, but we rarely think about the names they are given. A rug is a rug, a towel a towel. The labels are descriptive, efficient, forgettable. At The Lakehouse we wanted to resist that neutrality. If our philosophy begins with the idea that objects can hold emotion as design value, then their language should do the same.
That is why our pieces are called Angle Study, The Feeling Isn’t Gone, Said Without Saying, Berry Index, Pattern Language. They are not names of convenience, but fragments of story. They are not there to describe what the eye already sees, but to suggest what might be felt, the trace of a gesture, a remembered moment, a sentence unfinished. A name should extend an object beyond its material, turning fabric or ceramic into something more than surface.
Poetry, for us, is part of design. A duvet called Between Days speaks to the liminal state between waking and sleeping. A bolster named Pattern Language echoes the rhythms of architecture and conversation alike. Even a tea towel, the most unassuming of textiles, acquires personality when it carries a name like Berry Index, a catalogue of colour, taste, and season folded into cloth. These names matter because they invite relationship. They give objects a way of being remembered.
There is a quiet intimacy in this. We’ve seen people call for a cushion not by its function but by its title: “pass me Said Without Saying.” Over time, these names thread into households, creating familiarity that plain description never could. A rug that might otherwise disappear into the floor becomes The Feeling Isn’t Gone, a phrase that lingers in conversation as much as underfoot.
To name in this way is not branding in the conventional sense. It is world-building. It ensures continuity across categories, so that a rug can speak to a tray, and a towel to a duvet. Each title is part of a larger lexicon, a Lakehouse language. Together they create atmosphere not only in rooms, but in words.
Design has always been about attention. At The Lakehouse, we extend that attention into language itself. Because names are not only labels. They are stories, anchors, invitations. And if objects are to carry emotion, then the words that accompany them must carry it too.
