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- [00:01]
A
When I cleared out my parents home, I was amazed by the fact that when the contents of the home were packed up, it was no longer their home. The objects, whether it's books or furniture or little random little things, they are what make someone's home their home. Successful buildings should be thought about almost as extensions of ourselves, as living organisms. So they should swell and shrink and move with the seasons. Surfaces should be allowed to acquire beautiful patina. I was suddenly an orphan, and that was a funny feeling, particularly because my parents have always been real kind of hero figures for me, I think, to suddenly exist in a world where they're not there at the end of the phone or, you know, physically, you know, I felt quite, quite lost.
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B
Hello, welcome to a new episode of Homing with Me. Matt Gibbard. My guest today is the interior decorator, Patrick Williams. Patrick is the founder of Beur de Lat, a design practice named after the remarkable house in France that his parents painstakingly restored over a 20 year period during his childhood. It was a project that became central to their family story and one that continues to shape Patrick's work today. In this conversation, we talk about grief, inheritance, and the way that objects can hold the presence of the people we love. We discuss the rituals that connect him to his family roots, including a cherished family recipe he makes called the Truth. We also explore Patrick's fascination with classical architecture. He argues that the best buildings aren't just pleasing to look at, they were also designed in harmony with the human body, whether that's through proportion, acoustics, or the accumulation of patina over time. Patrick's house in Bath is one of the most beautiful I've ever visited for the podcast. But what emerged from talking to him and walking around the space was something a lot deeper. The sense that every room was carrying a conversation between generations. I think this is a really poignant story about memory and belonging and how the places we inhabit can help us stay connected to the people who shaped us long after they've gone. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it. Hi, Patrick.
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A
Hello.
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C
Thank you so much for having us here. So we should set the scene a bit. So we're in Bath, the very beautiful city of Bath. This is what an 18th century building we're in.
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A
Yeah, it sort of spans. Yeah, 18th through to 19th.
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C
Okay.
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A
Yeah.
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C
So it's your home and also your shop, which people may know bird Latin, but we will come on to that. I want to start with taking you back to your childhood. So I know you had a bit of a You split your time between two places, didn't you? But where were you born and where did you spend your early years?
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A
I was born in Winchester in Hampshire, which I think you know quite well.
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C
I do.
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A
And my parents were both modern languages teachers at Winchester College, so they had a good 40% of the year was holiday. And when I was in the womb, they bought a house in southwest France in the Armagnac region, so foothills of the Pyrenees, beautiful, you know, undulating hills. And every second of every holiday was then spent down in France. So the moment term ended, the car would already be packed and we'd be zooming south. And then sometimes we didn't quite make it back in time for the start of term if we missed a ferry boat or whatever. But it really was kind of every second of holiday was down in France. And then they had a couple of sabbatical years as well. So we lived down there during those periods. So, yeah, it was a kind of lovely mixture of Hampshire and Gascony.
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C
Okay, well, let's come on to Gascony, but let's start with Winchester then. So what was home? What was the physical manifestation of home?
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A
So when I was about four, my father got the job of being a housemaster at the college. So what that meant was we lived in the private wing of a vast Victorian boarding house. So we lived in, you know, really quite sizable quarters. And then behind us were 60 boys in dormitories and bedsits and all that sort of thing. So it was a strange existence in that, you know, that kind of warmth of the family home, I think, was somewhat disrupted because it was, you know, although it was sort of behind doors, we were sharing the same building with, you know, know 60 adolescents who, you know, during supper, they'd knock on the door and. And my dad's nickname was Doc bill, you know, Dr. Williams.
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C
Okay.
- [05:34]
A
And they'd be like, doc Bill, I need a light bulb. You know, things like that the whole time. But it was, I think, architecturally, the. The building had a real effect on me. It was a vast red brick Victorian, not very beautiful, but, you know, the ingredients were rather wonderful. It was. It was filled with lovely period fireplaces and floorboards and cornicing. And, you know, I think I was quite aware of all those things being quite, quite special even when I was a kid. My bedroom was enormous. I mean, it was probably the size of our shop here.
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C
Okay. Wow.
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A
And, you know, that was a space where I think an awful lot of my initial experimentation as a designer took place. So I would, when I was about nine, every weekend, I would move my room around and kind of change the position of furniture. And so I drove my parents nuts. And then when I was 10, 10 and a half, I found a cupboard for the pupils in the boarding house that was filled with these huge gray woolen blankets. They were a kind of brownie gray, very nondescript color, and when unfurled, they were about three, three and a half meters high or long. And so I worked out that I could pin these with hundreds of drawing pins to the ceiling of my room and they became these kind of partition walls.
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C
Okay.
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A
So my vast room became a kind of one bed flat. So I'd have a little area that was a sleeping area. I'd have a work area, a living room area. And I then started to kind of change that layout every weekend as well. So I was kind of experimenting and going, oh, you know, can I bring some light in from that window into this space? And if I hang this blanket at that angle, what does it do to the feel of the living room? And so it was sort of working in like a three dimensional plan with these weird, weird blankets. And then my mum, after a year or so of doing that, my mum said, look, you're obviously really interested in this space. Why don't you, if we buy the paint and so on, why don't you actually come up with a color scheme and decorate it? And so that was when I was about 12, 13, and I bought this. It was like a kind of creamy yellow for the walls and then a sort of gray, gray, blue for the floorboards. And I so enjoyed it. You know, I was really very particular about cutting in with the paint, you know, very perfectly, and took my time. But then I couldn't wait when it was all done and the floorboards were, you know, I sort of painted my way out of the room and when it wasn't quite dry in socks, I kind of tiptoed over to the middle of the room and just sat there, probably breathing in all sorts of kind of dulux fumes. And I looked around this room, a space that I thought I knew so well, having explored it so thoroughly for years. And it was completely new to me, completely transformed by the effect of painting the walls and the floor. And that was a moment I just thought, wow, the power of color and texture and how that can transform a space really was, I found, really overwhelming. So I think that was definitely a kind of pivotal moment where I got really interested in how you can transform a space. And then when I started to fill the Room again with all my stuff. It was much more minimal. You know, it's much more. I did a big edit and I only reintroduced things that looked just right. So it was sort of like wiping the slate clean and starting with a, a blank sheet.
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C
So interesting. How do you explain why you were doing that process? Because was it something that you saw your parents, I mean, clearly you saw, I mean, we'll come on to the project in France. But did you feel like that was a slightly innate process or were you copying something?
- [10:17]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think I was copying my parents. So, yeah, whether that's innate or not, it was deep down inside of me, this desire to work with objects and decoration and color. Winchester College gave my parents a budget to decorate the interior, but only for the spaces that prospective parents might visit. So the ground floor was beautiful and, you know, they really went to town and there was William Morris wallpaper everywhere and, you know, plush, thick carpet and so on. But then as you went upstairs, you know, the kind of impoverished teacher salary factor came into the mix and it was a lot more plain. But what was in abundance were beautiful pieces of furniture. You know, they really collected some beautiful, predominantly 18th century pieces of furniture which I remember enjoying as a, as a child as well.
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C
So if you're living, I mean, for people that don't know, Winchester College is a venerable boarding school that. Well, Rishi Sunak, the previous prime minister, went to, for example.
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A
He was in the boarding house.
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C
Well, he was in the boarding house when you were there.
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A
He was my neighbour, you know, within the same building for five years.
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C
Okay. I guess the question would be, did that feel like a home? Because it isn't. You're living in an institution. What did that do to your sense of home?
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A
It didn't feel like a home for my parents. And I think that's why they were so desperate to kind of escape their, you know, they obviously associated it with work. So. And I think that rubbed off on the three of us children, you know, in terms of us really finding that sense of home. And I think it probably made the French home feel all the more homely because we weren't sharing it with, you know, these other students. And, you know, it wasn't just the students. It would be, you know, at lunchtime, teachers and tutors would come and have lunch with the pupils and then come to our bit, to our drawing room for coffee afterwards. So you were constantly kind of having to deal with other people, which I think as a child is, you know, really does affect you. And foolishly I've gone and done exactly the same with my children.
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C
Well, I was gonna say, as you're talking, we can hear the ding of the bell as come in the shop.
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A
Exactly. So, you know, akin to the boarding house, just through that door is the general public. So I haven't learned.
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C
Okay, well, let's talk about France then. So you. You were living at Winchester College, but then every second of every holiday was in France, and your parents found a place. Tell us about it.
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A
So, yeah, they looked for. I think it was four summers in a row. They drove around with my siblings before I was born in a Renault 4, looking for the right place. You know, this is before. Right, move. So actually, the process of finding a house was a lot more convoluted. And, you know, if you imagine how quickly you scroll through and you. Something looks quite nice and then you click on it and the second image puts you off. To get to that point of the process, you have to kind of meet the estate agent and go and look at the place. You know what I mean? So anyway, it took them four summers, and at the end of the fourth summer, they were just. They just had enough. So they got in touch with their colleagues, Anne and Richard, who lived in a little village in the Jers region called Saint Puy. And they just said, look, we've really had enough. We still haven't found a house. Can we just come and crash with you for a couple of nights before the dreaded start of term in September? And so they turned up and started cooking a meal. And Richard and my father went off to the village shop to get a bottle of wine to accompany the meal. And the village shop is literally a stone's throw away. I mean, you can see it from their. Their house and on the door of the shop, sure enough, Maison Avondre. And so my dad thought, okay, maybe this is a sign. Maybe this sign is a sign. And they decided to go and try and find this house whilst the food was cooking. But, of course, didn't tell their wives what they were doing. And Richard, I think, had a corkscrew on him. So, you know, a couple of bottles of wine later, having got lost down a track, they've. They found the house and they were in quite good spirits. It's always helpful, always helpful. And anyway, the house was being sold by a very eccentric Dutch artist who apparently, when they approached the house, she was sat on a deck chair in the garden with this kind of pile of, you know, like a bonfire behind her.
- [15:27]
C
This may have been the wine, though.
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A
It may have been the wine. Anyway. And she famously then said to. To them, you know, do you want to me to speak in English or French or Dutch? And they chose English. And she said, welcome to my home. There is an entrance round my front side and my backside. Which would you like to take? So you can imagine it was hilarious for them. But the hilarity wore off when. When my dad went inside because he realized this was the place, you know, this was the place they'd been searching long and hard for. And it was perfect because there was just the right amount of, you know, original features remaining, beautiful 18th century, original cupboards, albeit, you know, they'd been painted purple and gold by the lady selling the place, but he just knew it was the one. So they went back to the village and came through the door. And of course my mum and Anne were like, where have you been? You know, you've been gone like three hours. We were so worried. And, you know, of course it was before mobile phones and so on. And my dad just said, rosie, I found the house. And that was it. And it was called Berdu Latte.
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C
Which means what?
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A
Well, it's a surname in French. There's a general Berdula. If you Google it, you see these pictures of this kind of First World War general. There's a theory that it might somehow relate to a kind of Latin name, you know, Verdus Latus or whatever, you know, Greendale, essentially, like in Postman Path. But it certainly was in a green. Nestled in this beautiful luscious valley surrounded by fields. They'd alternate between wheat and sunflowers each year. And it was part of a hamlet of. Of houses, most of which were ruined, one of which was lived in by our. Our neighbor, who was this farmer who'd originally come from the Basque country, whose name was Monsieur Etchevestre, which is, I think, quite a Basque name. But he ended up getting the nickname Itching Vest because he wore the same vest throughout the 1980s and most of the 90s. And it started out a kind of blue color and then gradually went sort of murky gray as I grew up.
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C
Maybe this is where your interest in antiques comes from.
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A
Possibly, yes. Yeah. Vintage clothing. Yeah.
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C
Okay, so they found the house and then I believe it was a 20 year restoration project.
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A
Yeah, I think there were some within that 20 years that there were sort of cyclical elements where they would do enough to it to allow us to live there as a family. And then a few years later they might undo those bits to do them better.
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C
All right.
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A
And that was to do with, you know, not having enough money to do it properly all at once. But also I think they kind of learned as they went along. And my father was a good woodworker and, you know, practical, you know, good, good with his hands, but he had to kind of learn how to wire and plumb and roof and, you know, lay concrete and all those things just by asking people around him, how is this done? And of course, made mistakes and had to take it out and do it again. He had this kind of fictional person he would speak to during, as he worked, called the Bedlat Devil. And my siblings and I became very fluent in expletives of many different languages as he kind of got things wrong and would curse and talk to the Bedlat Devil, which was very funny for all of us. He was very similar to John Cleese in Fawlty Towers. You know, his nickname was Basil because he was so similar to.
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C
So did he used to beat up his car with a branch and things like that?
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A
Yes, that sort of thing, yeah.
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C
So as a child, watching your parents do that and he's talking to the Burd Devil and he's getting very wound up, but he's also learning and he's creating in that story. You can very much see the pluses and minuses of that, can't you? I always think it's actually very. It's quite aspirational for a child to see their parents do something like that, if that's the right word. It's. It's inspiring in some way.
- [20:39]
A
Yes.
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C
It teaches, I think, the child about the material world as well, because inevitably you get a bit hands on, don't you? But there is. There has to be a compromise and a downside, which is, you know, perhaps the house can take up a lot of the family bandwidth and it can maybe get in the way of. Of that growth process between parent and child. So I just wondered what you feel about all that, looking back on it.
- [21:07]
A
Yeah, that's interesting. I think it probably did get in the way a lot of the time. You know, it fell to my mum to. She was the one who'd bundle the three of us children in the. In the De Chevaux and drive us to the local lake to go swimming every day and just get us out of the building site. And, yeah, my dad, yeah, he was very kind of one track mind. He would obsess about something and it would have to be completed and done just right. He. I don't know, he was sort of patient to a degree, but he was very keen to sort of plow on with the work. And my mum was probably kind of could. Could have done with a holiday, so. But what was great about it was, you know, so many people, when they take a holiday, it's a week or two weeks, three if you're really lucky. My parents, in the summer months, you know, they had over. Sometimes over two months off, and I think what that enabled them to do was to really unwind and disconnect from work and kind of connect with the work they were doing to the building and also the work of parenting in a really lovely way, so that it felt like there was a lot of space. And yes, my dad stressed out frequently, but it was always. He was always quite quick to recover. And overall, it was such a kind of happy, relaxed time. And I think we all really, really enjoyed it. And my siblings and I, we all revisit that region. Bedlat the house is no longer in the family, but my sister's just bought a project that she's restoring out there in pretty much the same village. And my brother and I love to go down there, you know, at least once a year. We've got friends and family there, and we still feel like we belong to that place. And I think, you know, it's natural for you to just kind of want to go back to. If you're lucky enough to have had a very happy childhood, you want to kind of revisit as much as possible.
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C
Cause I spoke to Professor Yvonne Dukes previously on a podcast, and she is an expert in prison architecture. Okay. And she was really interesting on this subject because she said that she and her partner bought a Georgian house in Cheltenham, very beautiful old house. And her partner became, she describes it, quite obsessed with the minutiae. Doing everything in the right way sounds in a similar way that your father did. Just wanted to treat it with total integrity and give the building what it needed, but to the detriment of their relationship. And after 11 years of this process, they ended up separating. And it was almost like that the house became the wedge that drove them apart. It's almost. She described it almost like his obsession was the thing that.
- [24:22]
A
Yes.
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C
And I just wondered, did you see that with your parents at all? I mean, did it bring them together or did it sometimes make things difficult?
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A
I think it was a combination of those things. You know, there were moments where it was really hard and, you know, you know what it's like when you're kind of. You've got young kids and it's a building site and you know, life is demanding, but I think coupled with that was all the exhilaration and all the joy when something was finished and beautiful. And we would. Irrespective of where the space was, whether it was a bedroom or a living room or a kind of downstairs loo or just a corridor, whenever a space was finished, we'd have a celebratory drink in that space as a family. So, you know, 6:30pm, glass of wine, few nibbles in the downstairs loo as a family in the downstairs loo? Yeah. Just to sort of toast and celebrate that space. And it's something that Neri, my wife, and I still do with our projects. You know, whenever a space is finished, wherever it may be, we kind of have a little celebratory drink in that space.
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C
That's a nice idea.
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A
And it was little things like that that I think outweighed any kind of stresses and strains. You know, it was the most beautiful place to live and, you know, obviously glorious weather, but, you know, the stars at night were just so clear and, you know, watching the moon rise above that hillside as you were having your supper, and all those kind of magical moments, I think far outweighed any of the trials and tribulations.
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C
So I gather that sort of gathering together and the act of making and eating food was a big deal for you.
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A
Huge. And, you know, my mum was the most incredible cook, very creative cook. She's the sort of person that could open a fridge and dig around and find, you know, things that most people would probably chuck in the bin and she'd create something incredible from it. And, you know, what was really interesting about living between the two places of Winchester and France was all of the food at Winchester was so different to what we ate in. In France. And in France, my parents really wanted to kind of. They really enjoyed this idea of, through the food that we ate, that they could. Could forge a connection with the place and with the house itself. The house was, you know, very lowly and peasanty and simple in a very beautiful way. It had been lived in by a combination of humans and animals. So running along one end of the kitchen was the manger that had holes in a beam, and you could see where the tethered animal had sort of worn away at the round hole and made it oval. The drawing room had been originally the kitchen. And so the huge. Oh, you know, this. We could have put this table on the fireplace. It was a huge open fire. And indeed, my parents cooked on the embers of that fire and the ceiling of that room was all blackened from all this kind of, you know, cooking schmeg over centuries. And they loved all those details and they loved making food that kind of connected in that way.
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C
Wasn't there one called the Truth?
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A
The truth was the most frequently consumed.
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C
Go on, what was that?
- [28:19]
A
So that was, I'd say, pretty much on a weekly basis, we would have the truth. And the reason it's called the Truth is because it's a recipe from Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. And there's this fantastic quote in that book. When we were all sat down at the table and the dish was in front of us, my dad would get a copy of French Provincial Cooking and it would sort of fall open at this page, and he would give what's known as the reading. And I think I can probably remember it off by heart. The reading goes like this. French gastronome, Francois Ametiguit, talks of this Lyonnaise sausage with its accompanying salad of potatoes in hot oil. In deeply emotional terms, it is pure. It precludes all sentimentality. It is the truth. And then he closed the book and sit. And we'd all tuck in. And the truth is this wonderfully simple, delicious dish. It's a sort of continuous coil of sausage. And you're down there. You don't really tend to buy sausages that have been made into individual lengths, so you just buy it by the meter. And that would be cooked either on the big open fire or on the barbecue. And then that would be served with hot new potatoes, you know, boiled, strained, put in a bowl with lots of olive oil, loads of salt and pepper, parsley and spring onion, but to the point where the parsley. There's almost more parsley and spring onion than potato. You know, really kind of part of the dish. And that was it. And we just. That with. With some mustard. So delicious. Heaven. And, you know, that dish means so much to me because for me, it really serves to illustrate the way in which my parents wanted to kind of. Their approach to the restoration of berdlat was all about simplicity of local ingredients and being honest and telling the truth with. With what they were doing.
- [30:49]
C
Yeah, I love that. Great analogy. And also, there's something around ritual, isn't there? You've talked about the ritual of sort of signing off a room, but also the ritual of coming together every day, but each week eating the same dish.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah, there's something beautiful about it.
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C
There's a kind of rhythm, isn't there?
- [31:07]
A
There's a rhythm. And that rhythm, you know, it's not just about the rhythm during those. On a weekly basis when I was a kid, it's a rhythm that. There's an echo of that rhythm now because I'm cooking that dish for my children round this table, you know, in a different part of the world. And I love the way in which recipes and, well, I suppose all of the, you know, any kind of sense, sensory engagement can connect you back to a place or back to people.
- [31:42]
C
So if you're making that dish, does that, does that bring bad a lot to mind for you?
- [31:47]
A
It really does, yeah, it really does. And it makes me think of my parents and it makes me think of that place and. Yeah, it's kind of not just the sight of it, but the smell and, you know, how it feels in the mouth even. They're all things that kind of take me back.
- [32:04]
C
You've described a happy upbringing. You know, it sounds like you had a good time at university as well. Looking back on it now, that sort of first 20 years or so of your life, what was the most difficult experience or time that you had? And there may not have particularly been one, but I'm interested in. Was there a downside to, to some of this?
- [32:26]
A
The time where I first discovered difficulty was probably after university. You know, I, I'd grown up in this idol, both in Winchester and southwest France. I mean, you know, such bubbles of beauty and privilege and all that sort of thing. And then, and then went to Oxford, which is a distilled version of that. So then post Oxford, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was a bit lost, not in a bad way, but I was, I was lost. And I ended up. My parents were down in France and so their house in Winchester was empty and I got a job as a security guard defending. I don't know if that's the right word, but looking after a, an NHS office building, okay, in central Winchester. And I had a kind of clip on nylon tie, I had epaulettes with eagles on them. And the, the, the shift was the night shift, so I kind of slept during the day and would go off to work at kind of 10:00pm and, you know, was a bit careful looking around corners before I went in it, just to check that no one I knew would see me in my daft outfit. And then I just. So I had this very solitary existence, you know, guarding this office block. I just read lots of books and didn't really see anyone for a good six, seven months. And I think I really needed that in order to sort of work out. Right, okay. I've got to do something with my life. But I needed that pause to then, you know, go and do what I, what I was meant to do, which, I don't know. I ended up going to London probably because a lot of my friends were there. And I got a job, I slept on my brother's floor and I got a job at Fortnum, Fortnum and Mason packing Christmas puddings for exportation. Which, you know, when you've, when you tied the bow around the hundredth Christmas pudding, it's soul destroying. And the one thing that got me through was I had headphones and I'd listen to music. And this was in not the basement, but the sub basement of Fortnum's. And my kind of line manager kept telling me off for wearing headphones because it was, you know, against the health and safety protocol. If there was a fire alarm, I might not hear it. And of course I kept, as soon as he left the room, I'd keep putting them back in. And it got to the point where he decided to fire me and had a word with the HR department, which was located right at the top of the building. And at pretty much exactly the same time I decided enough is enough and I'm going to resign. And the lift wasn't working that day. So as the hr, the HR lady came to fire me, I was going up the stairs to hand in my resignation and we met halfway up the building and had this hilarious conversation. So anyway, that was that. And then, yeah, eventually, then I got a job working for this company that runs competitions where you can win a supercar. You've probably seen them in an airport departure lounge and you kind of spot the ball and if you win, you win a Lamborghini or Ferrari or whatever.
- [36:19]
C
Yeah.
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A
And that was amazing because when I joined that company, there were four or five people in the head office. And by the time I left two or three years later, it had floated on the AIM stock market.
- [36:36]
B
Seriously?
- [36:36]
A
Yeah. So I witnessed the growth of a small business, which was a really useful thing to kind of get under my belt. So that enabled me to buy my first project, which was a kind of shell in Brixton, that I would come home from work, you know, and tear down a false ceiling in the evening and spent the whole weekend, you know, working on that place, you know, doing all the work my, myself. And I just, after a few months of doing that, I thought, hang on a minute, I'm enjoying this so much that this is what I need to be doing as a career.
- [37:19]
C
Okay.
- [37:20]
A
Then luckily I I got my first job doing an interior slash refurbishment work for a client. And. And back then, I was. I was doing a combination of the design and the actual physical work.
- [37:36]
C
Okay.
- [37:36]
A
So I did, you know, an awful lot of painting and decorating and that sort of thing. Um, and then gradually the sort of practical side of things went, and it was just designing and project managing and. And that's when Berdelaat was. Was born 20 years ago last year.
- [37:57]
C
Wow. I didn't realize it was as long as that.
- [37:58]
A
Yeah.
- [37:59]
C
How amazing. Okay, well, that brings us onto this place, then. So let's talk about here. So what brought you here and why this building and what was it like when you got here?
- [38:10]
A
The reason we came to Bath was because of the architecture. We didn't know a soul.
- [38:17]
C
Okay.
- [38:17]
A
In Bath, we actually. The bed and breakfast dream was what initially brought us to Bath. We were quite keen on this idea of restoring a beautiful old building in the middle of nowhere, but somewhere near Bath, because the countryside around here is so beautiful, and it's. It's a landscape that really reminded me of Gascony. It's very similar kind of layout and hills and so on. And so we kept coming to Bath to look for the right building and ended up falling in love with Bath itself. And it was actually when Neri was, I think, in the process of giving birth to our first daughter that I said, oh, I think I found the place. Which might not have been the best timing, but anyway, when our eldest was three months old, we moved to Bath and we tackled this very beautiful Georgian townhouse, which became the bed and breakfast. And it was the first time it had changed hands since 1809. And like all buildings that have had very little done to them, you know, it'd just been rented out to people year after year, and it had never suffered as a result of fashion. So all of the original paneling was all there. And, you know, it was in a pretty shocking state, but its poverty had sort of kept it alive. And so we restored that building and ran that as a bed and breakfast. And the guests would only had two bedrooms down in the basement, and the guests would come upstairs for their breakfast around our kitchen table. And Neri used to offer full English, but also a full Turkish breakfast.
- [40:16]
C
Oh, cool.
- [40:17]
A
Which was really good. It was, you know, kind of 12 different little dishes. And she won an award for it. And people would sit there and eat their breakfast and go, oh, oh, I like this coffee cup. Where do you get them? I like that pendant light. Where's that from? The bed linen was so soft. Where do you get it from? And it just got us thinking. Okay. I'd always had this dream as a child of running a shop. And at Berdelat, there was a tree outside where I would, you know, if you dug down into the field by about a foot, you'd reach clay of suitable quality to then make something. And my dad would fire it in the. In the barbecue overnight. And I used to sell these little pots in what I called my pottery shop when I was five or six. So it was definitely there from childhood, this idea of keeping shop. And I suppose when people started to show an interest in, in our homewares that we were using at the bnb, we kind of thought, okay, maybe this could work quite well. Maybe we need to start selling the things that we're actually using ourselves. And this building, we'd walked past it hundreds of times, walked inside it and just thought, wow, what a stunner. Even if it in its decrepit state. And it was one of those kind of what if places, and it came on the market and we had to fight very, very hard to. To get the place. You know, there were lots of people interested and I think probably the majority of people wanted to kind of turn it into a pizza express or whatever. And luckily, you know, I think they probably did pre apps with the council and the council said, thou shalt not, because it's such a special, you know, retail space. So, yeah, we were lucky enough to get this place and moved here nine years ago. And then it was a kind of four and a half year restoration project and we launched the shop just as Covid was subsiding and people could go out again. And it's been a really. It's served us so well as a. As a building.
- [42:43]
B
Forgive the brief interruption. We recorded a house tour to go with this episode and it's one of my absolute favourites. So if you're looking for some design inspiration, Patrick is a master of classical detailing, but he's also a great storyteller and it's full of emotional anecdotes as well. So head over to patreon.com homingwithmat to take a look.
- [43:07]
C
You're obviously a classicist. Is that fair to say? Yeah. You're drawn to Regency Georgian architecture, clearly.
- [43:16]
A
Yeah.
- [43:16]
C
Talk me through that. Why. Why is. What is it about classical building that holds the body in a certain way? Or, you know, how does it relate to you as a human being, as it were?
- [43:30]
A
I mean, in, in so many ways, which is why it's it just kind of chimes with me. I suppose the most significant way is physically, you know, the way in which classical architecture, with all of its kind of correct proportions, they. They follow the golden ratio and so on and so forth, which ultimately relate to the human body. And I think that's why when you see a beautiful Georgian facade with its perfect, perfectly proportioned sash window containing this grid of perfectly proportioned window panes,
- [44:13]
C
it
- [44:14]
A
feels perfect because it ultimately relates to the proportions in our. In our body. And then when you go into the building, you know, that visual experience, there's almost another dimension to that feeling as you experience the proportion of the room and you kind of. It's. It's about spatial proportion. But then there are all sorts of other reasons why I think it. It works so well. You know, one is the way in which very often classical architecture will celebrate local materials. And in so doing, the buildings are kind of rooted in their place, which you see here in Bath. I mean, everything is in bath stone. And. But the way in which the various different orders of classical architecture can kind of speak to that idea of place and belonging through materials and also the idea of identity. You know, certain orders are associated with different types of people or place.
- [45:17]
C
Really interesting. You kind of showed me around earlier on and we filmed it and we'll make that available to Patreon subscribers, as always. But the screen that you're sitting in front of, you are telling me about. Just tell us about this detail here, because people are going to be able to watch this on YouTube.
- [45:33]
A
So, so, so this detail here, I call the. The Adidas stripe. And that's just terminology I use when I'm speaking to the guys in the workshop, trying to describe the type of door that we're using, but because it's got these kind of three flush reeds running along it, and it's just a really nice detail. I'm trying to remember where I first met it, but it's a detail I met, I think, on a similar sort of, you know, 1850s screen. And it runs along the central rail where it meets this vertical style, as it's known, it's called a gunstock style, where it tapers here, so it's chunky at the bottom, giving the requisite strength. But then at the top, to maximize the. The glazed area and maximize the amount of light that comes in, it sort of tapers. And this forms the shape of. Of a kind of rifle, you know, gun stock. So we use that detail quite a lot. And I love the way the Adidas Stripe gets this kind of Cadillac esque fin where it meets the gun stock style.
- [46:47]
C
Fantastic.
- [46:48]
A
Just to combine lots of random brands.
- [46:50]
C
Yeah. I. As you know, I have co founded a business called Inigo and another one called the Modern House. And Inigo, I suppose is reflective of all the things you've talked about and I agree with, which is the way that classical proportions feel. Right. Somehow. I grew up in a Georgian building, so I experienced it firsthand. The quality of light, the quality proportions of spaces and so on. You know, there's nothing better. But also with my kind of modern architecture hat on, I also think, well, how if we try to keep recreating what's happened previously, how does our generation learn to progress? How do we move things on? What do you think about that? Maybe we don't need to move things on, but what's your view on that?
- [47:46]
A
I mean, do you think we should be eating powdered food like astronauts? I mean, if you think of a Lancashire hot pot, you know, why are we still eating a Lancashire hot pot if it's something that was eaten 200 years ago? When I think of traditional buildings, not necessarily classical buildings, but traditional buildings that are made using traditional materials with traditional building methods, I think the reason they're so successful for me is because of this idea of sensory engagement. You know, there's a sensory landscape in these buildings. Whether it's the visual aspect, whether it's, you know, the way in which the acoustic of a space or the sound of your footsteps on hollow floorboards, or the creak of a floorboard, the sound of a door closing into its frame, all of those sorts of things in a, in a traditionally built building, I think are so much more, more obvious. And they're things that we really engage with in a kind of bodily way. And I think, you know, for example, on the visual side of things. My daughter once said when she was tiny, I'd fed her these bird's eye potato waffles. And when she finished, she said those sash windows were delicious. Oh, and I was so. I was so incredibly proud, of course, because I thought what a wonderful connection that she's made, you know, and of course she'd grown up in Bath and that's the only window type she knew, probably. But it got me thinking about this idea of visual diet and how important those sorts of things are. You know, that when you are enjoying proportion that relates to the human form, it feels right. And I think with an awful lot of modern buildings that proportion, for me it doesn't quite work. And so I Don't feel so comfortable in those spaces because the proportions aren't quite right, but also the materials are often, you know, quite hard and therefore don't feel. I don't feel as a human being, like they relate to me in the same way. I feel like successful building should be thought about almost as extensions of ourselves, as living organisms. So they should swell and shrink, you know, and move with the seasons. They should. Surfaces should be allowed to acquire beautiful patina over time. I think it's beautiful when a ceiling undulates or where floorboards start to cup and you get that lovely kind of landscape across. Across the surface of the floor. And again, I feel like a lot of modern buildings, those kind of sensations are. Are lost and they're fighting. They're fighting against nature, you know, and because they're not built from lime, they crack and they deteriorate and they don't. They can't kind of, you know, in the way in which. When you meet an old person and they've got a fantastically wrinkled face and they've got gray hair, and that's all such a lovely part of their identity, you know, and it tells their story. And I feel like modernism is, as a language, it's still in its infancy compared to, you know, traditional architecture. And I think, you know, it still hasn't quite overcome this. This idea of having to live, A, with humans who scuff things and B, with nature where, you know, they need to be able to kind of move and adapt to their surroundings.
- [52:06]
C
Yeah, it's interesting.
- [52:07]
A
I just don't think they're compatible.
- [52:09]
C
So I. I agree with the points that you're making, but what I would say is I do think that the better modern buildings are able to provide that if they are materially set up in the right way. So that, to your point, they can take that ware.
- [52:30]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [52:31]
C
I think the problem is that, for example, John Pawson, who I've spoken to on the podcast previously, is clearly the master of.
- [52:40]
A
He's one of my big heroes.
- [52:41]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, mine too. And he knows that I've told him that. But there's a kind of. There's a. There's such a purity to the line, to the. To the planes of his architecture that they become about. They really become about light. They're just about light, I think.
- [52:58]
A
Yeah.
- [52:59]
C
To the extent that he doesn't put anything on the walls because it compromises that purity somehow. I think the problem we have is that. Because that's had so many imitators.
- [53:08]
A
Exactly.
- [53:09]
C
We think about, you Know, property developers who do that kind of look badly, where it's basically mean little boxes painted white.
- [53:16]
A
Exactly.
- [53:17]
C
With no soul. That's where I think modern architecture comes unstuck and can get a bad name, I think. But to pick up on what you're saying about the sensory aspect, if you think about this home of yours, what do you think of in terms of the kind of sounds and the smells and the multisensory experiences of being here?
- [53:41]
A
I think, you know, this is a very open plan space, both horizontally and vertically, and I. I really love being in the bath and smelling the roast chicken, you know, so. So from a kind of. From that perspective of. Of enjoying the kind of smell of a building, I love the way in which smells can kind of waft around the place. I love all the kind of creaks of the floorboards. You know, I love how when you're in one part of the building, you can sort of hear what's going on in the other part of the building. You know, you're really kind of connected through the kind of sound landscape. It's very alive, this building. You know, that idea of it being a kind of living thing. It's alive and well, and it has a loud voice. And, you know, the shop is part and parcel of this building. And I really feel like when we carried out the restoration, we spent so much time worrying about getting the details right when it came to the restoration of the fabric, you know, using the right timber and getting the right bead detail on there and so on and so forth. But actually, what we ended up doing inadvertently was to not just restore the fabric, but restore the spirit of the place as well. And when that shop is full of people, you know, when the local community come in and shop or chat to us, you can. You can sense the building loving their company. It loves to host people, which is such a nice thing to kind of, you know, I feel very proud about having restored that element.
- [55:43]
C
Yeah. Love that. We were looking earlier at your. Your door to the shop there, and it's got the scratch marks from your dog pouring at the door. And that is a very powerful, I think, visual manifestation of this multisensory thing you're talking about. If I think about my own home, that sound of the dog scratching the door, that's a really. That's quite a big part of my day there. Or the sounds of the children upstairs and the floorboards creaking as they move around, or, you know, the sound of curtains opening in the morning or shutters being folded back yeah. The other thing you said earlier that I wanted to pick you up on was this idea of a visual diet, which I really. Yeah, resonates with me a lot, that my wife, Faye, talks a lot about, you know, with our children, really exposing them to as much beauty as we possibly can, because it's important and it all goes in and it's all layered inside someone's brain somehow, especially in what they're consuming through popular culture. What kind of films are they watching, what kind of places are they visiting, Living in a place like Bath, what are they taking in architecturally every day? What else do you think about in that sense? Just through being a father, you know, do you do that in quite a conscious way?
- [57:01]
A
Yes, I suppose to a degree I do. Something as a father that I think works really well as a sort of reset button is just going out in nature and, you know, the children will argue and will be bored and will insist on, you know, watching telly and all that sort of thing. And when you suggest, oh, let's take the dog out for a walk, it's the last thing they want to do. And you, you know, you struggle and you argue and eventually they get in the car and then you drive to a nearby, you know, beautiful part of the countryside. And the moment they get out of the car, any kind of mood they were in vanishes. And they're in nature and they're playing. And very often, you know, even if they're a teenager, they're still kind of engaging in play in a much more juvenile way, which I think is so healthy, you know, climbing trees and swinging across rivers and all that sort of thing. So I think there's such value in. In that. As a kind of device just to kind of reset and connect back.
- [58:18]
C
Agreed.
- [58:18]
A
Particularly in. In this kind of screen hungry world.
- [58:23]
C
Yeah, agreed. So you've got two girls, age 13 and 10.
- [58:28]
A
Yes.
- [58:29]
C
What kind of father do you think you are, out of interest? And do you think you're quite similar to your own dad in some ways?
- [58:36]
A
Yes. I kind of catch myself sometimes, you know, sounding just like him. I think, you know, it probably doesn't help this. This thing of kind of being in the same building as the shop, but also my studio at the other end of the building. So, you know, home is. Is sandwiched between these two kind of work things. And I run my own practice, so, you know, inevitably work is. Is there the whole time, and I think sometimes it's there too much, which is. Is detrimental for that. That relationship. People, you know, say to me oh, but what your children have witnessed is how you've grown this business and, and how you, you know, designed something one day and then there it is in front of them, having been built the next day. And how wonderful that they get to witness that. Which is, which is probably true. But I do wonder sometimes whether, whether I've got the balance right on that front. But I also think maybe it's a bit selfish, but I feel like I kind of rely on the children to, to take me out of that workplace and focus in on something, you know, more meaningful. And I'm really grateful to them for, for doing that, you know, that they're a useful kind of way of changing gear.
- [60:07]
C
Yeah, exactly. Because we all experience that thing and so many of us work from home to at least some degree now, don't we? I mean, you know, you're quite an extreme example of that and that you're, you know, you've got a work sandwich. Do you find yourself sitting at this table eating together, but your mind is somewhere else because you're still in that work zone. And how do you make that transition between the two? You know, I feel like we kind of need to have a deliberate transition. Almost like taking the hat off.
- [60:34]
A
Yes. Taking the hat off or the, the commute. You know, I'm jealous of people that sort of, you know, even if it's just a kind of five minute walk from one, from, you know, even if, if you're at the bottom of the garden, you will walk into your home and you're in a different zone.
- [60:53]
C
Yeah.
- [60:53]
A
Mentally, yeah. As well as physically. So, yeah, I do, I do struggle to kind of separate the two. I mean, I think I try and use the day, I try and use time to separate the two. So I'm an early bird. I kind of start work at 5 in the morning.
- [61:12]
C
Oh really?
- [61:13]
A
And what that does is it enables me to focus really, really hard for a couple of hours before the rest of the family wake up. And I get more done in those two hours than four or five hours during the rest of the day. So that's my kind of special moment where, particularly if it's a demanding thing like a, you know, a vat return or a really annoying kind of wiring diagram for a building or whatever, something that kind of demands a lot of focus. And so I find if I've had a successful morning, by 7am I'm able to relax into the day because I feel like I've achieved something already. And, and through that, you know, relaxation, I'm, I'm Then probably a little bit more patient with children getting ready for school and all those sorts of frantic moments.
- [62:10]
C
Yeah. As you're talking, I was wondering about, you know, could you even at the end of your working day, go out of the shop, lock it up and then, you know, round the blocks on the back of the building, come through that way? That could even, that could be a bit of a reset.
- [62:27]
A
Might be quite a good. I might try that. That reminds me what the Danish do on New Year's Eve. They, they go out the front door and then in through the back door, but in a sort of dancing choo choo train, which we did here once with some Danish friends. But yeah, I might try that.
- [62:45]
C
Yeah, you said. I know that you're interested in the link between the home and the body and the mind well being. Tell me about that. How do we, how do we consider spaces so that they support the. Well being, support the nervous system, as
- [63:04]
A
we were saying, you know, proportion is a big one, but also using the right materials. So, you know, the way in which a room, you know, the acoustic quality of a space, I think is very important to how we feel. I mean, you know, the sound of this glass going onto an oak table, if you imagine the equivalent if it was going on to marble.
- [63:29]
C
Yeah.
- [63:29]
A
If I put a glass down on a bit of stone, it makes me feel uneasy, you know, physically and mentally. So there's those sort of more nuanced things to do with materials. If you think of a modern plastered wall, okay, you've got this kind of. Plasterers are taught to kind of do this perfect mirror finish. That's what's encouraged. Right. The flat mirror perfection. Now the difference when it comes to the play of light across that surface or even how sound bounces off that surface is very different to a lather and plaster wall, for example, which has this kind of movement to it that feels a lot more, a lot gentler. And then if you think about the corner of that modern plastered wall, you know, which has invariably a metal angle bead, you know, with its fin that you, you bring your trowel up to. So you've got this very, very perfect line, this very crisp line. And those lines, they, they tend to kind of go around, let's say a window reveal. So whether it's a doorway or a window reveal, these are things that you kind of pass through. You might lean and look out the window, you might pass through an aperture in a wall to go to another room. And I feel that, you know, when you're passing through I mean, before you've even passed through it physically, you've. Mentally, you've gone through that window to look at the view outside. And if that's continually kind of framed in this harsh, sharp line, that, for me, that also makes me feel really uneasy. And I love the traditional way of, you know, doing a corner where you'd have a timber dowel, you know, serving as a bead, and the plaster either kind of wraps over it. And then, yes, there's a. There's a crack where the two materials shift, but that's sort of celebrated. Or you have that lovely quirked detail where, you know, the plaster is kind of tucked in at 45 degrees, and then you see the timber. And that is something that looks beautiful. It looks soft to the eye, but also, as you physically, as you pass by it, it's a nice thing to kind of brush up against. You know, it's not sharp and harsh. So I think it's all these little details that can help make you feel at ease. You know, the use of natural materials and these kind of more traditional approaches to building techniques that really, really help.
- [66:24]
C
Definitely, I agree with that. Are there any spaces that you can think of that make you feel the opposite to that, that you come across in everyday life?
- [66:35]
A
Well, I mean, this whole thing of, you know, whether modernism is a success or not and where it should be used and not. I do feel with public spaces like airports or art galleries even, I think there's definitely a place for the more modernist, clean and minimal approach there. Because, you know, I hate to agree with Le Corbusier, but this whole idea of. He said, you know, we should think about buildings as machines for living in. I. I disagree with that when it comes to domestic architecture, because of what we've just been talking about. I just. I just don't think human beings and modernism are compatible in the home.
- [67:26]
C
Okay.
- [67:27]
A
And this is just my opinion. I know there'll be hundreds of people out there, you know, disagreeing with me, which is. Which is great. They will. But I think, you know, if you think of an airport, you know, its primary function is to get hundreds and hundreds of people every second passing through this building. They need to. They need to do various things like drop off their luggage, check in, sit and wait, buy a sandwich board. The aircraft, it's a functionality building. That's its primary concern. And I think modernism works really, really well for that, because it's not. You don't really want to hang out in an airport. You just want to get your plane. And I Think with an art museum, you know, I think it's great if the building can, you know, needs to kind of play second fiddle to the. The artwork that's on display. So it needs to be neutral enough to frame what's being exhibited. So I think it works there as well. But when it comes to a home, I just. I don't feel comfortable in a building that's kind of sharp and, you know, doesn't feel particularly human.
- [68:41]
C
It's interesting. As you're talking, I was thinking. So I'm finishing off my latest book at the moment, which is called Homing. And one of the things I've been writing about is exactly that, actually, which is how does certain public spaces make us feel? And I was thinking about a recent trip to New York, and I went to MoMA, and I also went to the Guggenheim, and I was struck by what a joyful, humane experience it was to visit the Guggenheim, because it takes you on this promenade, up through the building, along a ramp. And what I love about that experience is that you are always aware of exactly where you are in the building, because the eye can find its point. Wherever you are, there's always a means of escape, because if you want to, you can just turn around and trundle back down again or roly poly down to the bottom if you want.
- [69:38]
A
Yeah.
- [69:39]
C
Whereas I think there are spaces like MoMA or. Or Tate Modern or many other art galleries that are.
- [69:47]
A
They.
- [69:47]
C
They do feel so inhumane. They are very rectangular. There's shadow gaps. There's. There's nothing to entertain the eye. And also, there's no means of escape. So when you're in the middle of most art galleries in a kind of central gallery space, you haven't got. Actually haven't got a clue how to find your way. Have you mapped it in your brain somehow?
- [70:09]
A
Like ikea?
- [70:10]
C
It's like ikea, which is the worst of all.
- [70:12]
A
Yeah.
- [70:12]
C
You're. You're stuck in some horrendous holding pattern.
- [70:16]
A
And. And in the New York, MOMA is very like an airport. Yeah. You know, particularly because it's rammed full of people the whole time as well. You know, I. I love the Guggenheim.
- [70:26]
C
Yeah.
- [70:27]
A
I love the ramp, and I actually love how low the wall is.
- [70:33]
C
Yeah.
- [70:33]
A
So you sort of. You feel there's a real kind of energy there as you look over. You know, it's interesting that the. The. The building has clearly moved a lot over time, and the walls must be repainted frequently, but there ain't no repainting the concrete floor.
- [70:55]
C
Yeah.
- [70:56]
A
And so you look down over this nice low wall, you look down at the floor that is full of cracks. And I love those cracks because they're honest, but, you know, clearly weren't intentional.
- [71:10]
C
Sure.
- [71:11]
A
So there's an example of the kind of the original design concept failing because of an incompatibility with nature.
- [71:20]
C
Yeah, I hear you. And it puts me in mind as well, getting back to the Tate, of course, that brilliant. Was it Doris Salcedo who did that amazing crack through the concrete floor in the turbine. Turbine hall.
- [71:30]
A
Right.
- [71:30]
C
Which you can still see remnants of.
- [71:32]
A
Right.
- [71:33]
C
And so that's a lovely thing because they filled it in, but you can still see where the crap was.
- [71:36]
A
The sort of ghost of it.
- [71:37]
C
The ghost of it. And actually, that's what a lot of this comes back to. We were talking earlier about leaving traces, but as human beings, we. We are physical and we leave traces behind, don't we, of ourselves.
- [71:48]
A
Yeah.
- [71:49]
C
And I think that's what you can feel, certainly in this building.
- [71:53]
A
Yeah, very much so. And, you know, I feel people use this expression the whole time, but I really do feel honored to. To be part of this building trajectory and to be a layer.
- [72:08]
C
Yeah, I love that. I want to mention you've written a really lovely book about your. It's about your life, but it's also about your approach to interiors. It's a picture book, but what I love about it as well is it's got lots of autobiography in there as well. So you've made that link between the personal and the architectural, which I always like. So I'd really encourage people to have a look at that. But I think I'd like to just finish by just sort of taking you back to Berdilat again as this very formative place from your childhood. How do you look back on it now? I mean, have you been back there and do you have an urge to go back there?
- [72:53]
A
I like to avoid going back there. So my. My parents sold the place. I'm trying to think now, you know, quite. Quite a while ago it was when I was kind of in the midst of, you know, setting up my own life as an adult. And I think I was so preoccupied with how exciting the world was, you know, post uni, that I. At the time, I didn't think, oh, what a shame. You know, my family home is. Is. Is going. But actually I'm quite grateful that that happened and that it's sort of preserved in my memory as this perfect place. And sadly, it was bought by. By a couple who ended up, I think, sort of renting it out as a holiday let. And so, you know, immediately kind of didn't get the love that it had been used to. And so I'm loathe to go back there and see it in an altered state. And I like to just sort of keep it in my mind. And like I said, the region is still home, the landscape is still home and all of those things that I associate with that place still give me that sensation of being there.
- [74:17]
C
So you were telling me that your father passed away a few years ago. I'm sorry to hear about that. What was that time like for you? Because he's obviously a very special character for you. I mean, that's clear. He taught you a huge amount. How, how do you, how do you look back on that now and do you have things here that remind you of him a lot?
- [74:37]
A
Yeah, I mean pretty much everything remind reminds me of him. And this book is really, it's just a huge tribute to, to my dad and to my mum. And it was, it was really lovely, right, the whole process of writing the book and you know, researching the book because I had to do an awful lot of researching myself, if that makes sense. And it was so lovely to kind of delve back into my childhood and realize how the impact that my parents both had on me as an individual, but particularly as a designer. And you know, my dad would sort of, while supper was coming together, you know, in the sort of closing stages of my mum's, of my mum cooking supper, he would always, you know, take hold of my hand with his glass of wine in the other hand and we'd sort of go off on a little tour to the next door room and he'd just point out little things, whether it was the hands on a clock or the way the lime render would sort of pillow and tuck in where it met the lintel of a doorway or just. He was so good at kind of pointing out little details that all went in when I was a kid. And you know, they're all the things that I, I've sort of built a career, I think through you know, understanding how to sort of read a building and then how to build a relationship with it and then do things to it that are right for it. And the title of my book is the House Rules which is it reflects our mantra as a, as a practice which is that the, the building is the client, the building is the boss and should dictate everything that's done to it. And that all comes from my parents approach to the way in which they restored baedela. It's all kind of stems from that really.
- [77:01]
C
And in your study you have a, a bust of a man looking over your shoulder as you're working. And you were telling me that you. It's not your father, but it looks uncannily like your father.
- [77:14]
A
Yeah. And so that bust, my wife and I were, it was actually when my dad was, was in hospital and you know, the final kind of fortnight before he died and we, we were at the Bath Decorative Antiques Fair and saw this, this bust and thought, gosh, that looks so like him. And so had to buy it. And of course now it's, it's him, you know, despite the fact it was not originally of him, but it's become him. And so that sort of, when I'm sat at my desk, he's on a, on a sort of column stand just here and then on the chimney breast. I've, I've moved it since. But there, there was this portrait of my great grandmother on my mum's side. And, you know, I think she's particularly beautiful and she really reminds me of my mum. And so I suddenly realized, actually, I think it was when I was listening to your conversation with Nigel Slater that unconsciously I'd sort of place myself between my two parents. You know, there was my mum on the wall in, in the form of this painting, and there was my dad here in the form of this bust. And so they, they're both sort of looking over me on a day to day basis, which was really nice realization. And I think it was listening to your podcast, you were talking about something similar, this idea of unconsciously sort of, or maybe consciously using portraits of other people to actually represent your ancestors. And I think Nigel had sort of bought a couple of paintings that became his parents.
- [79:11]
C
That's right. It's so interesting, isn't it? I mean, my own father died a few years ago as well. I've talked about that on the podcast before and I think that this doesn't get talked about enough. But actually, as a man losing your father, aside from the emotion of it, it's also. I don't know if you feel this, but I feel there's a kind of, also a weight of responsibility somehow that gets passed across. It's like you're now the village elder somehow. I know that sounds quite reductive, but there is something in that, I think. Did you feel that?
- [79:49]
A
Yeah. I wonder if that depends on whether there's a surviving parent, you know, whether. Because my mum died first.
- [79:58]
C
Yeah.
- [79:58]
A
And I Think what happened when my father died was that actually I sort of mourned my mom all over again. You know, it sort of brought that all back, you know, a few years later. So I sort of grieved them as one unit, if that makes sense. And, you know, I was suddenly an orphan. And that was a. That was a funny feeling because. Particularly because my parents have always been real kind of hero figures for me, I think, to suddenly exist in a world where they're not there at the end of the phone or, you know, physically, you know, I felt quite, quite lost. And again, you know, putting together this book has really helped me sort of come to terms with that and sort of, you know, it's been an important part of the grieving process. And when my mum died, I poured everything into a creative project as well, which was to make a film that was shown at her funeral. And it was a film all about her life. And so I got in touch with everyone that she'd known from childhood right the way through and asked them to sort of contribute, you know, just on an iPhone, just sort of record little messages of memories, which I then put on top of photographs and video footage and that sort of thing. So again, I think for me, that along with, I also created a book. My mum was an amazing artist. She never sold her work or exhibited her work in her lifetime, but she would give it to members of the family and she was prolific. She. She made an awful lot of paintings and sculptures and ceramics and that sort of thing. So when she died, I got in touch with everyone that I knew, had some of her work and asked them to document it and I compiled it into a. Into a book and the book ended up, you know, that thick. So again, that was a way. I think. I think my way of dealing with loss is to sort of create. So it was about making a film, making a book about my mum, and then making this book about me and my relationship with both of them. And it was. It was really useful.
- [82:34]
C
Yeah, I love that. That makes a lot of sense. Also, it strikes me maybe that are you a family and an individual who puts a lot of stock by this idea that an object can hold memory?
- [82:50]
A
Yeah, very much so. I. When I cleared out my parents home in Spain, I was amazed by the fact that when the contents of the home were packed up in boxes, it was no longer their home. I think you'd imagine that the building carries this kind of spirit, and to a degree I think it does. I think place holds the memory of people, but actually I Think that objects, you know, whether it's books or furniture or little, random little things, I think they are what make someone's home their. Their home, if that makes sense. And I think. I think as we go through life, we. Our interiors are a bit like nets, and they sort of. They let unimportant things pass through, but the really vital things, the things that end up being descriptive of that life remain. And they are a form of portraiture, of self portraiture. And I love the way in which when you inherit pieces of furniture, you know, you. Then they relate to the person that you've inherited them from, and they carry memory with them, and I think that's really beautiful. So there's lots of things in this home that kind of link back to people that have passed away.
- [84:25]
C
Yeah. Final question. Given everything we've talked about today, how do you summarize the meaning of your home and the position that it has in your life as an individual?
- [84:39]
A
For me, being at home is a kind of safe environment. And I think that feeling of safety comes from being really familiar with everything. Not just which books are on the shelf and in what order and things like that, but, you know, the sound of the sash window descending or the sound of the. The bells on a Monday, because that's when they practice at the abbey, and little things like that. And that. That sense of security, I think is what I value most about. About home. And it's. It's a place where you can just be yourself and you feel safe.
- [85:28]
C
Yeah. Thanks so much, Patrick.
- [85:31]
A
Thank you. It's been such a pleasure.
- [85:36]
B
Thanks very much for listening, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly love spending the morning with Patrick. He and I have children of a similar age, and he sent me home laden with gifts, very kindly, including some raw indigo pigment to give to my eldest daughter, whose name is Indigo. So that was really kind of him. As you probably gathered, Patrick's house is a total knockout. If you want to take a look inside, inside, you can watch my home
- [86:03]
C
tour, of course, on Patreon.
- [86:05]
B
He tells me some really emotional stories
- [86:07]
C
about some of the objects in the
- [86:08]
B
house and also about a particular space that he's created in honor of his mother. That brought a lump to my throat, I must say. So the web address for that is patreon.com homingwithmat as we mentioned in the conversation, Patrick has a book out called the House Rules, which is well worth look. It's full of beautiful images, but it's also a really interesting story as well. I think if you enjoyed this podcast and can spare a second to leave us a review. We'd be most grateful for that. There's another great guest coming up next week, so if you haven't already subscribed to the show, please do tap on the follow button and it will appear in your feed as soon as it gets released. This episode was produced by Pod Shop, which with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks all and talk to you next time. Bye for now.