Tattoos: Mo Coppoletta On The History Of Ink

Went hand in hand throughout centuries with the need of every society to heavily decorate any aspects of their lives. The most iconic, romantic, if you want, imagery was always used, a wire dragon and not puddle. At the very end of the 19th century Tatooine was just for the very high end of society. It's okay, that's really interesting. Sure, every time a redraw dragon will be different, it will have a different personality. Yeah, that's the magical thing. Yeah, absolutely. How many suits can you have? Wow, they all are jacket and per try. That's very true. But they all have their personality. Hello and welcome to the luxury dispatch. The podcast that reveals the refined and the rare, the stories, people and items that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain and today we are talking decorative arts with one of its most respected modern practitioners, Mocha Poletta. Tatooine is where he applied his trade, setting up the world famous family business in Clark and Well, but this is not the world of back alley symbols and drunken gap in mistakes. Tatooine's for many years been the playground for royals and m&nons of Europe and beyond. Why? The artists themselves are part of the broader design movements of their age, I give hints as to the world around us. It's tastes, it's eccentricities and how it wishes to express itself and that is what we will be discussing today. No, I'd love it to see. Hello Tom, how are you? You look superb. Terry hates, sure. Of course. I saw my red m&nons. I read them. You saw the m&nons gree but in a different model. Yes, you said it's broad daylight and so it went great. Yeah, very good. Yes, imagine the mood about side. So in that enormously flattering introduction, which I should say you are great friends of mine. So I'm so I'm so only the truth. I picked out a few terms which really I've learned from you, specifically the decorative arts. But the world of tattoos, it's something that you've been in a very long time, but it is a world that goes back a long way, isn't it? And I've loved looking into this one and discovering some really wonderful stories about tattoos through the years. So why don't we start talking about that and then we'll move into today and the sort of landscape of decorative arts, tattoos, design, etc. Sure, I mean the need of humankind as a whole to decorate their bodies has been embedded in humankind ever since the first developments of signs, marks, very early decorations and apart from jewels and adornments amongst the body adornments, there was also tattooing. If we want to go back, the very first human remains were tattooed and then we if we go through different cultures and different parts of the world from Egypt to West Africa to Asia, we could find tattooed bodies and tattooed remains. And then tools with which tattoos were applied. So the need of man to adorn their body also with some sort of rudimental pigments and insertion on the skin of some sort of decorations was ever present. Of course then he caught up and he got refined and but the big especially you know Eastern cultures like Japan and but also even more far east in Samoa and Borneo and all. Yeah the Pacific Islanders and the Pacific Islanders. And the Pacific Islanders. They have a very deep spiritual religious and not just pure decoration. This decoration we're always linked to somehow supernatural world and culture and spiritual attitude towards them. Was there a sort of the craftsmanship aspect to it? Obviously there's the artistry of actually creating recognizable patterns and shapes and figures that we understand on the body but do you think from the start there were always kind of crafts people that were turned to to apply these things or was it perhaps a slightly more rudimentary in the early days? No no I mean I think and then and then as you as you very beautifully introduced me earlier it goes back to the need of man to somehow refine its decorative and its artistic skills also through the medium of tattooing. Yeah so so of course what seemed quite crude and rudimental at first became quite refined later as did all the decorative arts. Yes and so all different kinds of methods of applying ink on the skin were used up until the very last part of the 19th century where the electric machine was invented so marking quite a you know before and after kind of technique to apply tattoos and that opened up all sorts of technical innovations. This is from the technical point of view from the decorative and from from from the what was applied of course the most iconic somehow romantic if you want imagery was always used. Why arose had a much more powerful you know significance than a day because rose brings all those are the semantic and and and and and very deep symbology so a wire dragon and not a puddle because you know so there is we could stay here for days to dissect what went to become iconic tattoo icons but there is there is a reason for everything like there's always been for decorative art which is not just a beautiful ornament but most of decorative arts were based on wanting to depict something a story a certain number of symbology so the world of decorative art even though it's like the lesser brother of the art art with the capital A I think in reality it's a it's an art form that is layered so it pleases the eye start with but then you can peel and peel and peel and find more symbology behind that medusa head by that number of grapes that were used in some other decoration the number of swells on a on a building the number of whatever you want. So decorative art is always being very careful the more decorative art where the original graphic with it's not necessarily based. Well that's the interesting thing is that is it you know tattooing predates portraiture and and sort of artistry comes through from portraiture and and sort of has moved down into kind of contemporary art and obviously you have expressionism and cubism and all these sort of kind of tributaries of art that have drifted away from what was the original sort of form of of artry which was portraiture but you know even the Harold King Harold after the Battle of Hastings you know he was identified his body was identified through his tattoos and that of course is an interesting point because people I think see tattooing in the context of you know back alley shops where you might get an infected needle or like yeah but let me let me let me say something yeah this was the second stage of modern tattooing. Oh I see okay because at the very end of the 19th century tattooing was just for the very high end of society. It's okay that's really interesting so just the the very few interestingly enough Saddam and McDonnell which is the forefather of modern tattooing of English tattooing followed by George Bruchette after but most of all Saddam and McDonnell who allegedly tattooed George V when he was look of York. Yeah I think I mean I see that it was I think it was it was a track he visited Japan it was very inspired basically. No but he got he got dragon in Japan. He got it in Japan. The dragon. Yeah. Okay so George V it's so interesting because George V was the stamp collecting King right he was not a very good-guarrious interesting man he shot a lot of peasants I mean shot a lot apparently after his coronation he went she's in for a weekend and I think they killed three and a half thousand but it said apparently his diary entry for the day was I think we might have taken this a little bit too far machine man but but either his big thing was stamp collecting and he was a strict constitutional monocus so you know like Elizabeth II you didn't know much about him and I definitely wouldn't have expected that he would have been a heavily tattooed man but he was. He was but the interesting fact is that Saddam and McDonnell set up his tattoo shop number 76 German Street and in the turkey they were Turkish bars yeah then it's called the Amam so it was right in the middle of the fashionable part of town so yeah. So you have to ask also because of the gentlemen's club and everything they go to. So that was, Tatwing was considered just for the top part of society. And later on, it got the 20s and 30s and 40s. The widespread. So it became more accessible. It became accessible and it became to harbors and the part of the city. But actually, to start with, it was in the very heart of St. James's. Yeah, that's so interesting. Even George's of his father, Edward VII. He was much more fun. Yeah. He was a great love. So he had a huge seduce and a cross on his board. And that's amazing. The symbolism of that is quite something. Because tattoos are a mark. If you committed to a mark underneath your skin, you definitely commit to something that has to have an impact. It's not just a wishy-wash imagery. And so, you know, it's the choice of the imagery. It's very interesting. The history of the imagery, of the two imagery, is beautiful. And if you go around in circles, he always comes back the same, about classic that we, because back to the same 20, 25, 30 icons, reinterpreted, redesigned, redrawn, but always the same. Why? Because they retain a power when worn that other imagery do not possess. Are there any in particular that sort of stand out for you that perhaps carry real significance or symbolism within that world? Well, for my tattoo in Korea, I've always been very keen on two main sources, oriental imagery for his powerful iconic message, both for the highly decorative power they possess. And Western religious iconography, sacred hearts, rosary beads, roses, daggers, and they possess such an iconic, strong message that they became one of my main influences, my main source of inspiration. And the other thing about you as well, that's worth noting, is it's not just the symbols, it's the scale. You have really made your mark by just the scale of the tattoos that you do. Some just go all the way from the nape of the neck down to the buttocks, I should say. I mean, really, it comes everything. In a sort of almost, I would say, you sort of use Japanese style. Is that a little bit more easy? This game from the late 1980s up until COVID, the world of tattooing a scene, it's called an age. It's seen a widespread popularity that hopefully will come back again, but I think it's probably going to be unparalleled in the future. Tatooine now has seen more like a commodity. The business became so widespread that it was good for certain aspects, but definitely it took that cool club feel away. So 15 years up until 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I could recognize someone's work and someone's was straight away. One thing that you alluded to was the idea that the symbolism of tattoos was always relevant to the era in which people were and the expression of things like architecture. You were talking about telephone boxes and post-mixes. They were a certain shape for certain reasons. We talk about that and people making choices of the tattoos they were getting and how that linked to society at large and the decisions that were being made with regards to you talk about how you love looking up at buildings because they say so much about the world that they were built in. I mean, decorative arts is the first form of design and graphic design because it's closer to math than it is to the art art where you can have the gesture of the painter. Everything was quite precise and calculated. And it went hand in hand throughout the centuries with the need of every society to heavily decorate any aspects of their lives. All these, if you just take the last two centuries, one of its highest peaks during Victorian era where everything was decorated. City landscape was decorated through benches, boulders, streetboulders, railings. And then all these lampposts, the need of decorating went beyond the actual purpose of the era. So everything, every streetboulders was decorated with the name of the parish or with the city of London. So the society felt the need to decorate absolutely everything from nice and folks, China, Vases. The idea of cluttering came, richly speaking Victorian time, frames, pictures. So even objects that didn't need decoration were highly decorated. Then these transitions, you know, with art nouveau and then give way to art deco with these clean lines. Yes, exactly. So there was a need to simplify the lines by retaining the highly decorative aspect of it, even though the lines were much more simple. The sheer opulence of the decoration, even in art deco with this simple line, it was as opulent as you can get. And then you carried a lot of the art deco lines were carried through the 40s, the 50s, the streamline, all the beautiful cars and the bodies of the car were just so round and beautifully connected and streamlined, 67. Up until the 80s, the world felt the need of decorative elements around it. Yeah, it's so fascinating. Like you think of something as simple as the cantilever chair. So you know, that was seen as a real icon of the art deco. And before, you know, in the Victorian times, everything was like the captain's chair. So it was like, you know, heavily cushioned and, you know, beautiful woodwork and all these sorts of things. And so it's so funny how things shift in terms of, you know, how much, not necessarily how much effort somebody's going to put into it, but you know, what people see and it comes down to taste, doesn't it? It's a, it's a taste thing. Yeah, of course. Of course, it's a reflection of the taste or the other way around. I mean, I don't know who the taste makers were at the time, but definitely can define errors by their architecture, their decorative pattern, their aesthetics. But somehow we got to the end of that and it seems like, I don't want to sound like, man of my age, but you want to, but we always look back to a time where craft, who's doubt a lot of skills and the appreciations of those even simple everyday objects goes beyond and it survives through an era now, which in my opinion, started throughout the 80s, where it seems that there's no need for decorator, there's no need for beauty, there's no need to decorate things, there's no, there's no an urge to have an embellished anything. Yes, well, you know, and people don't seem to take any more pleasure in that if you see the way they go about, you know, so. Nick and I were talking yesterday about the court's crisis and how basically the success of the court partly was down to the fact that ultimately in the 80s, or certainly through the 70s and into the 80s, technology and new techies things like the synthesizer or whatever. That was, you know, people didn't want grand pianos, they wanted synthesizers, you know, they wanted this new age of thing. And so a court's watch kind of played into that. And I guess it's the same here as that ultimately there was that period where, you know, the future was everything. Sci-fi, rules, TV and we were going to be removed. It seems like that the more need for technology and we live in an era where we just be tainted by it. Yeah, yeah. It seems that that takes a stools on the, on the beauty of the craftsmanship. Yes, I agree. So it's somehow goes in parallel from, you know, one goes up, the other one goes down. When somebody goes into CU for tattooing, do you find that if somebody is looking to get a, an impression tattoo, they are willing to wait for your, both guidance and also the space and artist needs to create something, you know, your sketches and then, you know, just make sure that you get the challenge. Sure, sure. Sure. - It's absolutely like bespoke tailoring, it's absolutely like ordering a watch to an independent watchmaker or a pair of shoes. When people get into that frame of mind, the weight in time doesn't become an issue anymore. It's just part of the process, it's actually part of the business. - So there is a constituency for that. There is people here, yeah, okay, fine. - And even because you can't delegate to technology. - No. - There's nothing you can't delegate to technology. Maybe you can use an iPad instead of pen and paper. But to draft the first draft. - You haven't told Chad to be teeter, designers. - You can't. (laughing) - To do it. - You're right, you're all the same too. - Yeah. And so, okay, so why don't we talk about that process then, you know, in terms of let's say somebody comes in and wants something that is not necessarily sort of a full back tattoo, but something that is on Nate. Do you advise on, let's say, I know that you love Art Deco and that you, you know, well, I mean, you have many loves. Do you advise several options or do you find that people have a very specific idea of what they want? I mean, - Well, no, you know, when you establish, I mean, I've been tattooing for many years. And when you establish your name is kind of a natural selection, people come to you because of your aesthetics and you don't need to force them into what you would like. To do, they come with sometimes broad, sometimes not so broad idea, but ultimately, they chose you over somebody else because of your style and your aesthetics, the same goes for any other profession, like a tailor or an architect or a painter. - Which for the benefits of people listening or watching, what is that aesthetic? - My aesthetic? - Well, as I said, I'm a big lover of decorative art, so I take my source of inspiration as far as the tattooing is concerned, from many different sources and have explored many different visual approaches. But tattooing is quite, it has rules. You can't do exactly what you want and in the scale you want it. There are rules to take into account. You know, it's on the skin, skin moves, the skin ages. So you have to give lines enough space to breathe and so it goes for the shade and the color, that's a whole theory. But in terms of iconography, I always pick from the classics. I did many different graphic approaches in my life. It can go from medieval to renaissance, to a lot of Victorian and William Morris to some straight line of our day, it depends on the piece at hand, but mainly I focused basically on a lot of Japanese iconography and Japanese layouts of big pieces and Western, collied Western religious or decorative source of inspiration. So I think as a tattoo artist, I had quite a broad spectrum of offerings. But it was all quite defined by the way I interpreted them because there's so many coicards you can draw in your life. And so do all the other tattoos around the world. But if you have your take and your taste and you infuse your view on it, every coicard looks a little bit different. And I'm sure every time I redraw a dragon, it'll be different. It will have a different personality. Yeah. That's the magic of it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, they all are jacket and belt trousers. That's very true. Yeah. One thing that you do a lot is you collaborate with luxury brands. Sure. I mean, the takeaway from that for me is that they see you. It's not just this guy's a good graphic designer. It's more actually, I think tattoo artists have a good steer on cultural taste society. What people are kind of, what they find agreeable. Where they're taste is shifting. We've spoken about how with our deco, the taste shifted completely on its head. But designers were able to kind of keep up with that. But with luxury brands when they want to have product created, they've come to you because they sort of feel like you have a really good steer on what people might enjoy and what might have an impact today. Creating things like the Oxford Finissimo for Bugery or even the label for this bottle. Or you've even created the watch design from scratch and not just dials. So let's talk about that. Well, it was a natural progression. I always believed that I can't call myself an art. I don't know what I am. I am different things. But I applied my vision through my drawing skills and my design skills and tattooing was a medium. So yes, it was the biggest part of my life so far. And it was a phase I went through. Because ultimately a designer sells his taste. And then if he's also able to convey his taste because he's also very skillful in drawing and designing, those are more tools that you have in your repertoire. But ultimately a designer conveys his taste onto different products, projects. And so this started quite slowly because I felt the need to divert or to apply my aesthetics to other and watches where the first platform that I was asked to perform because I was been very interested, I've been a collector. I know a lot of people in the watch industry. One thing I have to say, I'm very grateful for all my life because he gave me a job that it's probably a dream too many. But I always been asked to all the assignments that I had were for products or projects that was always an avid collector of or very interested in. So it was always on this side of the counter. And so when I designed something, I wear my designer hat. But also on the side I have my consumer hat, which kind of watch would I like to see according to the brand DNA, which watch would I like to acquire. So if you ask me to design something that I'm not very interested in, probably I could do a good design job. But probably I want to infuse it with that extra dedication, that extra attention to how it will perform once out on the market because ultimately we're talking about commercial products. So you've got to make sure you pierce through not just because you design something beautiful. But if that beautiful design is just a monument to yourself, but there's no wearable, there's not this, there's not that. You've got to keep that in mind. And I think your DNA has to come through because it's inevitable. You designing it by respecting the job at hand is also very important because design is not art. Design as a functionality to it. The designer must respect that. All the designer throughout the history, who didn't respect that and just built a monument for themselves. They didn't achieve a great design. They achieved something for themselves, which is not my objective, even because when you work in an industry, for example, the watch industry where you ask to do to work for different brands, you can't just do a mock-up or let a watch for all of them. Yeah. They have to be for this brand, for the other brand, for the other brand, for the other brand. So all this makes require a lot of study, a lot of mathematical process before the creative hands starts drawing or sketching out the first few lines. So it's a process. It's a study. It's not-- draw me a couple of lines and let's see what comes out. It's a-- at least for me. My process of working is very methodical. It's very mathematical. And that comes from tattooing. There was no room for error. There's no gesture that you could mimic. You could mimic the artistic gesture, but then you have to reproduce it mathematically. So when I design, whether it's just decorating something, there already exists or creating it from scratch, it goes through a very mathematical method of thinking. Then I let my creativity based on that study take over. Authors say that they like to write about 1,000 words a day if they're doing a book. And I just sort of wondered whether there's an equivalent for something like design. Absolutely. So do you want to achieve something per day to kind of keep things from doing that and going? Absolutely. And first of all, I have been bombarded with decorative information from an early age. My physical and mental library is huge. My source of inspirations are never ending. Tell me a bit more about that, the young age inspirations. Well, my dad, on his second part of his career, was an antique dealer, my mama Taylor. So an avid, avid collected orders of anything. Yes. So when I came to London, the idea of clattering was already embedded in me. Tays are not tidy, please. So minimalist. But was it very-- It was never, it was never me. - But was it very Italian? - Very Italian. - Okay. - Very Italian also French, also Eastern Europe because we were going, I remember going with my dad once a month to Eastern Europe to collect furniture and paintings to buy them and take them to Italy. So I was always quite subconsciously, as I said, bombarded with imagery. - You were soaking up a lot of, a lot of imagery. - A lot of imagery. - You saw his lines, lines, imagery lines. - I went to law school, so I never thought, I was the worst in my class of drawing, who would have thought that drawing, designing and painting would become my career, I would have never thought of that. Then I started with tattooing because you needed to be a good draftman as well as a good tattooer and then that developed for the more. But for every project, there is a phase of study where you have to collect your, not just inspiration, but your sources, you need to drop yourself, to submerge yourself into a movie. Somehow, it's always a romantic vintage movie for me, I don't know why, but it's always 'cause of Blanca. It's always like that. (laughing) But you submerge, so you need to select your few points in history that it could inspire you. And then you need to set yourself free from all the rest. And then, so that is the study phase. You need to start, you need to immerse yourself a lot into that. And believe me, jumping from one project which could be designing a watch from scratch to an illustration for an other company, to a branded identity for a hotel, you need to jump into three or four different movie sets every day, and each and every one of them has its source of inspiration, set of rules, which means-- - Vision with rules come limitations. - A come limitation, but you wanna limit yourself, because otherwise-- - You'll never come to a decision to be a movie. - No, no, you'll never, because they said, "Can you design me a watch?" Yeah, yeah, of course. - Who are you first? And then you think, you know, how long is a business dream? I wanted to, too. "Oh, okay, what do you want?" I don't know, you don't know. Give me something, buy it on. I need direction, because as I said, my mental and also physical, my book collection is never ending, it's everywhere. And even though you go back to the same time books at the end, I don't know why, the same very book, the first very book that I bought when I started the tune, which was the very first decorative art book, which now is battered. I still go back to that, because every time you reopen-- - Open kiss it, probably. - It's a resonance illustration, and decorative plates throughout history, so from Egypt, the Arab world, renaissance, art deco, and it's plate after plate after plate. Every time you reopen the book, you catch a corner. - Places in China, places in-- - Places is a printing plate, so yeah. - And you find the new corner, you go, look at that. I've been through this page a million times in my life, but I never seen that corner. That gives you, that's part something. And believe me, even if you start creatively, you don't know where you're going at first. As soon as you hit that line, as soon as you-- you didn't know where you're going to go. One line reveals itself, then line is followed by a very, another sweeping line that touches it, it's tangent to it, and then it evolves, evolves, and you've got it. You don't need anything anymore. You break free, you take off your donuts, and you start swimming by yourself, and it comes. And then what do you do? In order to prove that your first idea was the best, you do another two or three lesser ones, because just to prove that the first one was good, that you didn't catch it in the first bounce, but actually you tried another two or three variants. Those two or three variants, maybe you archived them back, but you go back to the very first original idea, because that's where your feeling was that you interpret that DNA, and that's how it comes out. So it's very mathematical, but also very-- it comes from the soul. It's a combination of personal as well as my master's. So as a well-studied and a lot of the discussion. He was his objective and subjective, both. And the balance is the key. Balance is the key. So I brought a prop for this particular bit. Wonderful. Because when we were talking about the Victorians and the opulents in their design, not only for housework but also everywhere they could possibly design. I think after the First World War, we saw the end of that and a new world of minimalism and a new world of elegance that meant clean lines and space. And a part of that, I know, has to do with the death of the train as the main way that people traveled in a luxury manner, and that the aeroplane-- and so people had to get rid of trunks, had to get rid of items that they would bring with them. Because on the train, you could just literally do whatever you want. And then with aeroplanes, it had to be slightly minimized. But here's a piece from this excellent book by Peter M. Neal and Georgia Rio called Luxury of Rich History. And it says, "The First World War brought with it the death of millions of young men, the disruption of succession in the great land of the states and the destruction of huge sues in Europe." A certain cultural pessimism also set in, as well as modernist aesthetics, that rejected the lavishness and historicism of the Bellapocke. Luxury underwent a redefinition, losing much of its formula opulence. And then started introducing people like Coco Chanel and Jean-Michel Frank. And Jean-Michel Frank, really interesting with his desks and his furniture, because it really was-- it was like pin-thin, the legs of the desks were thin as possible. So whether it was specifically the war that changed all these things, either way, taste changed forever, didn't it? And so let's talk about Art Deco and your love of it and also your knowledge of-- I disagree a little bit with a lot about a desks statement. And I'll tell you in a second why. When we reached our peak in our Western world, with Victorian times, and then we had the Bellapocke, and especially in France, then the art nouveau, liberty, as it was known as, in Italy. There was an abundance. There was so much swells and decorative things in every corner that the world got fed up, that coincides also with the war. But there was an indigestion of over-decorated anything. There was a need to streamline and clean up the lines and make it more easy to deal. To add a little bit of a breath of fresh air. But that, that's why I disagree with the latter part of that statement. It wasn't in this favor of opulency, quite the opposite. Art deco, streamlined everything. Actually, Art deco introduced clean frames for very ornate paintings. He offered clean lines for the most lavish materials. So there's nothing about Art deco that is popular and cheap. On the opposite, he was like black marble all the way up with a little bit of gold. Lots of glass. Lots of glass everywhere. And it was a huge amount of craftsmanship to obtain La Lique. Oh my god. All of this was the opulency and it's very, very, very bad. So it's that clean, elegant opulence that came in conjunction with jazz, flat, with Gatsby. And this is the most affordable Art deco, cultural Art deco. But Art deco, why did Art deco survive so much? If you think about Art nouveau, Art nouveau is for the history books. Yes. It's there. It's going to set on time. But no one will think about. You can google Image it, but difficult to see it. We'll refer Bisha Hotel today based on Art nouveau. Correct. But majority of the bigotels, especially in London and all over the world, ah, shh. New refurbs are strongly influenced still by Art deco. The clean line and the rationalism of space of Art deco is still ever-presence. Why? Because it's rational. Because it makes sense. So to have a clean outside, but then you over-decorate and ornate the inside, there's the right balance between order and liabé or chaos. That's why the clean line of Art deco went throughout the 60s, the 70s. If you think about a lot of 70s imagery with all these fields of colors, they were very popps psychedelic. But the very Art deco, if you want, same goes for the 60s. And same goes for the cars of the 40s and the 50s from America, all those cromes, very Art deco. There was a right, you know, ah, even the white walls of the wheels. That's a very Art deco thing, isn't it? Yes. Art deco. Everything. And still the power of Art, by the way, is the 100th year of Art deco. It is. It is a huge division in Paris, you know. And the clarages did something on it as well. Because clarages, of course, is very much, I mean, it's. I mean, no, and all the pattern, that was also the war'sly floor. The bare-monotail is a great example of a hotel that was basically built in the, what were there been like 10 years ago or something? Yeah, and it's a great expression of modern art, they go. Correct. You think it's original, you know? And it's funny with something like, let's say the Conor Hotel. So you've got the Conor Hotel, which is a pre-art deco expression of opulence. And people love it because it's sort of all fashion and cozy and wonderful. And also, you can think about the original aeroplanes, so there's sort of commercial jets. They were sort of chrome, weren't they? Chrome and riveted. I mean, so they were kind of these expressions of luxury were, they were attempts to democratize it. I mean, I know that jet travel and stuff and time was only for a specific set. Even airport terminals are fantastic. If you think about the TWA terminal designed by Sarinan in New York, we just reopen as a hotel, which is the maximum expression of the 60s. The maximum with that big eye-shaped sculpture with all the ticking tabs for the times of the, when I saw it last year. Oh my god, that is the most beautiful experience the one could ever experience. If you land in New York, just go and see it for a drink or something. But that was 60s, it was obviously Barbarela kind of 60s or Crockwell Coran gelato. But it's definitely an Ardeco inspiration with the staircase coming through. Crockwell Coran. It's lines, it's lines again, it's clean. That's why Ardeco is surviving even to this day is no over yet. Because I'm more still very relevant today. I would say when I see a lot of your designs, I think Ardeco. Yes, this big inspiration. Yeah, but also I think that you probably turn to it a lot because as you say, it's a great mix of that mathematics and also taste that you were talking about. Lines. Exactly. And you think about the interiors of yachts and all this sort of stuff. Ardeco played such an important part of creating the most of the space that you were given. But also it's just interesting how when people think of it, it's sort of a universal, quite a joyed design spec. So when you go past a building today that's Ardeco, I was like, "Ooh, it's Ardeco." You always do. People do, it is drawing to the eye and so it's funny how it just has been this sort of everlasting. A huge use of the vanishing point, so everything was flying away from your eyes. All the holes were very tall. The windows were very slim. So this ambition to the sky, this thunderbird, this streamlined speed and vanishing away was very, and still is very attractive to people. Ardeco lines, they never failed the main tower and then the big bathtub shape building around it. It makes a lot of sense because it's rational and it's based on rational laws. And from the Fibonacci spiral and it's code, somehow human are attracted to rational things that then you can find in nature and shells and things. There is a connection between math and what's inside, which is, it sounds quite the opposite because one is very rational, one very rational, but it's not. The human mind, the human soul is attracted to some sort of order. Which is so fascinating to me because it makes me consider worlds that I don't quite understand like contemporary art, where it's pure subjective expression from the artist who wants to put out whatever it is they got in their gut. But there doesn't necessarily constitute any laws, it's a purely personal thing. And I find it hard to sort of understand. I don't see the order in it. Well, it's been, it's been, it's been imported and it's been baptized as a thing. I think the intention from within has overtaken the dexterity and the skills a little bit too much for, there are a few genuine examples, but a lot of it has been used as a shortcut in order to produce, let's put it like that. It's way more easy to imitate Jackson Pollock, the Leonardo da Vinci. I understand that both of them have the place in history. Yeah. But what I'm saying is it would be easier for me to splatter a canvas than going through that. If a splatter canvas at the very end of my skills and then I decide, like Picasso said, he said, it took me five years to paint like Raphaelio and took me a lifetime to paint like a child. Yeah. You know, if you get back after your training, then it shows. If you use it as a shortcut, then it shows also. It'll be the equivalent of having a piano in front of me and start tinkling on the ivy, it's like that and calling that music. Is that real music? Well, if I come to that after 50 years of being classic, maybe there is a thing, you know, so I take it with a pinch of salt. That's when I lose. That's why, personally, I am attracted when a sheer amount of human skills is infused into something with a genius idea. Just the what you have inside and it comes out as you want. You may, if you were a musician and you can't neither play the guitar nor the piano, what kind of musician are you or composer, definitely you need a set of skills and then you need to be overly manoeuvraistic, but you need to show a bit of your skills, even because if you had those skills, you can only, you die to show them. You know what I mean? If you have skills, it shows. You want to show off. Yeah. I do think that's why you're so drawn to watches. I mean, titatoring and she making of course, but watches in particular have that mathematical engineering aspect of beyond anything else and your gagalabatory thing, for example, is a perfect example of you being, you know, coming to understand how there could be a kind of coexistence, a nice harmony between great design and then also the maths and engineering of a watch movement. Yeah, but also if you think about it, what is that sold watches throughout the decades? Definitely the mechanism and the engineering, but look, the design of them. Yes. It's what appeals to the most and look how big brands now, they just rely on their heritage and their archives and they never fail. Every time they come back with an archival design, an archive design, they always hit the market. As soon as they start to depart, there's no people want that iconic design. Maybe sometimes they develop it too much, but it's, but it goes to show that there was a golden era of design. There was a golden era of finding new lines, of finding shapes, of finding things, which seems now to just show at times. We think about 20 to 30, 40 to 50, 60s. It was a never-ending research for the ultimate shape and line from a coffee mug to an incredible piece of machinery. He all had to please the eyes of that particular era. Okay, it's incredible. So I'm going to throw out one more question that I think could start to debate. Why do we like Robin Burley's stuff? Because obviously it's very different. Well, it's very different. First of all, as I said at the very beginning, my parents being cluttered. Before we get into this, I think we're saying that everyone's not listening. This is the private members' clubs like Five Half a Street and Oswarts. There's a very particular, very English taste there, I would say, that it stands in contrast to our deco and but that we at the same time, we really love. We do. As I said, there wasn't a single corner in a home that wasn't either a flower arrangement or another frame or a thing and it was changing completely. So when I dwelled into London's most beautiful clubs, I felt a home immediately. But there's a level of making you feel good. I'm not talking about abandoned clutter. That's another thing. Some plates. It's a fine line. Some storage office. Some old hotels feel stuffy and old and dusty. When we talk about Five Half a Street or Oswarts or the bakery, we're talking about being embraced by warmth, being embraced by comfort, being embraced by opulence, but that opulence that doesn't make you feel out of place, but embraces you and keeps you there. There's this wonderful picture of Mark Burley, Robyn's father, who he's in his home on his sofa, like it's going to swallow him whole. It's like Uncle Monty's and with Nell and I. It looks so comfy, but behind him, there's a lamp and then there's touching the lampshade. There's another lampshade to another lamp. They're right next to each other. A group of lamps. It just, but it looks perfect. It just seems so thought through and it kind of feels like if you took one of those lamps away, it wouldn't work. But you can't. Every time you add something, At least my experience, every time I add something at home, if I remove it, there's a sense of emptiness that I didn't feel before I added it. So, and also you can't just buy millions of things with money and put them all together. This is a work in progress, is a work about, it's a work of piecing it together. It's not, you need to have a sensibility in order to clutter as well as that. - Right, good. - It's not just putting a lot of things next to each other, there's a curation to it. - So, that then brings everything full circle to some extent, too. The body can be cluttered with tattoos and things like that. - I make a lot of sense. - Right. And I guess that that's also part of it in somebody saying, "I want to tattoo" and it's like, well, you need to put it in a very specific place in your body because if you're putting it there, it just, it won't work, it'll ruin the last one you had or whatever. So, these processes can be exactly the same for both the human body and also houses. - It goes back to the same source of need of decorative elements around your life. - And where do you consider, I mean, or how do you consider the course that the luxury industry is currently taking with regards to their boldness with design and their use of design as part of the storytelling that looks about the totally obsessed with at the moment? - Well, they are obsessed because they delegated to marketing all the, you know, all the future sales and all the future successes of the brand. And then they thought that marketing alone, it's not enough. Ultimately, you need to go back to the product and they learned that the hard way and devoting themselves back to the actual product is what, listen, those things have to make me dream, they have to make me want to depart so much from my money because I think I'm living another dream. If you don't devote attention to that object that you're selling me, but you just let that nice campaign sell it to me, it won't last long. So, I think there is, I think they're not doing enough, I think there should be more attention to design. I think especially that industry should be more awards to design or attention, or articles about why it's been designed in certain way because people will appreciate that a lot rather than another testimonial. - Yes. - You know, why those lines are like that, why instead of a press release, if they get designers involved and talk about the genesis of this new watch, of this thing, people will find that absolutely incredibly compelling. There's a pianist who I watched once and he used to explain the context of, for example, when Shapa wrote a specific piece and he'd just been rejected by the woman he'd sort of fall in love with who he was giving piano lessons to. And then he played it and it was like, "God, that makes sense." - Of course, of course. - Wow. If someone will explain to me the origin of the crash, the Royal Lodge, you know, they'd be milking it, but it's fine. No, in the same way, I love you. We all know, and I'd say, Gerard Jenton, we don't know, fantastic. But if you apply that to all of your creations, people will appreciate it much more. It's skills-marrying romantic ideas, it's just mesmerizing. And I think that is where design at the moment is pushing the most, the creativity. - I remain Tom Chamberlain and this has been the luxury dispatch. The podcast that tells you all the stories you didn't realize you wanted to know and answers all the questions you are yet to ask. Please do like, subscribe, and if you have any comments, we look forward to reading them. Agree, disagree, suggest other topics you'd like to hear as cover. No review will go unread. Thank you for listening.