More Beausage, please

Okay, so it's a neologism; that won't keep me from liking the word beausage a whole helluva lot.

Here are some more examples of beausage (the beauty that comes with usage):

• Wrinkles on a grandfather's face
• Gouges and dents on the bed of a 1955 Chevy pickup
• Wear patterns on a boot tread

Would love to hear about more beausage -- leave a comment below with your own example.

Comments

[Harsh]

I have this interesting example of Beausage and it is related to books.
I am not sure if anybody has noticed this, but, lets say you have a reference book, after regular usage, the binding becomes old. When you flip through such a book, the pages at which your flipping will stop will be the most read pages.
This is true for any old book. If you flip through an old book, the pages where the flipping will stop will be most read/visted pages.

[jens]

harsh, that is a great example.
draws a line between our young friend "beausage" and "patina".

unfortunately i can't think of anything as precise as this at the moment.

well, maybe lying in an old bed, dozing off in an old arm chair, sitting on an old swing, sitting in a well used leather saddle, walking in those well ridden hiking boots...

i am not a cook, but i think, chefs usually have a love for kitchen tools they have been using for ages... would not think that it is only about sentimental issues...

if i think of my old nikon - i do have problems trading it in for a digital one. some reason is because of this "patina" that you can not really see but feel - "beausage" if you want...

[Patrick Misterovich]

Willie Nelson's guitar.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/1998/Jul-10-Fri-1998/photos/lifestyle.jpg

[jens]

shane mc gowan's (front man of irish band "the pouges") teeth

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/10/1049567806121.html

.) just joking

[Mike]

wear-lines on my mountain bike grips

[Daylin Breen]

Is beausage like wabi-sabi?

[Kirby]

as noted by jens, i can think of a bunch cooking things, but this stands out - cast iron pans!

and, as i'm listening to my husband tell the billy goat story to my kids - oral stories.

also, i was just in my kids' end of year potluck at their waldorf nursery school and everything there had beausage - stumps, capes in colors of the rainbow handmade from soft cotton, teacups in dark wood, nesting wooden boats to sail anywhere an imagination can go, bunnies knitted of alpaca, sturdy wooden chairs just sized for 3 and 4 year olds.

[Michael Wagner]

My leather basketball that I only allow to be played with on a wood gym floor is for me a good example of beausage. It moves from the the new bright clean color and feel to that of the worn used color and feel. Immediately recongizable. And ask any basketball player and they will tell you their worn basketball is always the one they want the pick up game to be played with. It just feel "right".

Also Pirsig has a great reflection early in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about his cheap well-worn leather motorcycle gloves. He doesn't use beausage but he sees quality/beauty in them I would say.

[jens]

a little bit more on drawing the line between "patina" and "beausage".

patina = as in heavy duty, stood the test of time, scars

beausage = as in love-marks (not the kevin roberts thing), signs of devoted(?) use, sign of almost professional like context of use, memory of being used in a way that truely honours the product, memory of product use that enhances product quality

[Scott Underwood]

The pointer to Willie Nelson's guitar above reminded me of Eric Clapton's Stratocaster, "Blackie":
http://www.stratcollector.com/scn/ec1.html

The fretboards on older guitars start showing wear at the most used positions due to finger oils. Also, on close inspection you see the burnishing on the frets themselves under the strings from bending. The inlay for the Fender logo is flaking away, but the bone "nut" (where the strings leave the fretboard for the tuning head) looks new and has probably been replaced several times.

Finally, note the burn marks on the headstock from countless cigarettes held in the traditional manner while playing.

[Tom Guarriello]

I echoed Daylin's question about beausage and wabi-sabi in a post on my blog. Whatever you call this quality, it definitely turns mundane objects into something special.

Here's the brief post:

http://truetalk.typepad.com/truetalk/2005/05/deep_beauty.html

[jens]

through tom's post i came to
http://www.hdschellnack.de/archives/381-BEAUSAGE.html
which is in german and/but well-worth reading

if you have not yet, use the machine or have somebody translate it.

[slippyfish]

My old prof Don Carr mentioned blue jeans and manhole covers... with the curious explosion in pre-worn blue jean couture recently only manhole covers still apply.

http://www.frangipani.info/gallery/manholes_of_japan?page=1

[jens]

your beausage is served, sir.

sitting by an old coffee house in one of madrid's nice royal parks reading the weekend ft - my favourite saturday routine wherever i am. ft paper edition to be precise. the haptic and visual quality of the paper changes already after a couple of minutes being exposed to the spanish weather. fun thing.
reading about a couple that had just moved from canada to london, and she writes how much she likes the place
"...to us the capital is like a much-loved old chair in need of some repair; the fraying around the edges just adds to its charakter. sadly , between the tube chaos and grey winters, we seem to be in an ugly phase of uk-bashing, from natives and foreigners alike. .... but the whingeing to us is just like white noise: we love london and now consider it home, happily concurring with samuel johnson's "when a man is tired of beausage.. OOPS SORRY .. of london, he is tired of life"

regards from the old world.

[Helen]

The absence of stuffing and matted fur on the middle of a stuffed animal bunny that I had growing up because I hugged it so much.
:)

[Jonathan Stampf]

My brother attended New York Military Academy. My father was asked for a donation to repair the stairs of the barracks. He wrote a letter to the commander about the wear on the granite steps being from the generations of cadets who had trod the same steps. I'm told his letter had something to do with the cancelling of the plans to replace the steps.

I beleive the beausage you refer to is the evidence of use. It is the ghosts of those gone before us, or evidence of our own use and of our own immortality.