House notes
How we sit
A sitting is a few hours at a table with papers you already own. This page is the house account of how the morning actually runs, so you can decide whether to write for a date.
The custom of the house is simple: one person (or a consented family group) in the paper room, notes taken by hand, copies made in sight, and a finished page that the sitter can refuse.
Arrival
Come ten minutes early if you can. The building lobby is ordinary. At Level 12 the door is marked with the studio name and a paper card for the day’s sittings. You will be offered water, not a tour. Coats go on a peg. Phones stay in a bag unless you need a photograph of a paper that is too fragile to copy on the glass plate.
The table
You sit facing the window. The practitioner sits with their back to the street so the light falls on the page, not on your face like an examination. A shallow tray at your left hand is for papers you are willing to show. Papers you are not willing to show stay in your bag; we will not ask to see a document you have already declined.
The first twenty minutes of an Opening Sitting or a canvas are for the span of years and the list of stations. We do not begin with childhood unless you put childhood on the list. Many identity journeys in this room begin at a worksite, a dock, a school gate, or a registry counter.
Papers
Useful papers are marked by use, not by official stamp: a letter, a roster, a badge, a photograph with writing on the back, a ticket, a recipe, a deed poll. We copy in the room and return the original before you stand up. We do not keep a studio file of your family papers. Draft canvases are printed for you; our working notes are destroyed after binding, except for a sealed duplicate you have asked us to hold.
Pace and silence
A sitting can stop. If a station cannot be spoken that day, it is written on the list as a blank and offered again at the next date. Crying is ordinary and is not treated as a conclusion. We do not fill silence with interpretation while you are still finding a sentence.
Family sittings use a spoken order agreed at the start. No one is cross-examined by a relative in the room; if that begins, the practitioner will close the sitting and offer two separate dates instead.
After you leave
For an Opening Sitting you take a card of stations. For an Applied Identity Review or a canvas, a draft follows on paper within the span we named when we booked. You mark the draft. The bound canvas is collected from York Street or posted by registered mail inside Australia at cost.
Sample stations (anonymised)
The samples below are stations from finished canvases, rewritten so no sitter can be named. They show the grain of the work, not a gallery of faces.
The second surname at the counter
A name used for a year of shop work because the factory name still drew questions. The canvas treats the renaming as labour.
The roll that would not take the restored name
A public list kept printing a put-down name. The applied review mapped the corridors where the old name was still spoken.
Two tickets, two years
Siblings who left on different sailings. The family sitting put both tickets on one page and left the disagreement intact.
The recipe book that was the station
Not a charming detail. The book marked the year a language stopped being spoken at the table and started being measured in spoons.
When you know the sitting you want, write for a date. If you want the flagship commission in full, read the Identity Journey Canvas particulars first.