Q+A #015: Guy Tobin [Antique Dealer + Consultant]
🖼️ 80,000 Images ✏️ Bill Blass’s Drawing Room 🗿 Egyptian Schist Bust 🥀 Phoebe Cummings Raw Clay 🏛️ Vaulted Studio 📐 Humour, Tradition and Modernity
‘Storied Spaces’ is the RIALTO newsletter featuring ‘Q+A’, a bi-weekly column that features guest curators from the community, whom we invite to share inspiration from their home library. In each edit, you will hear from creatives we admire about the analogue inspirations that inform their work and vision.
Guy Tobin has spent the past 28 years woven into the fabric of the British antiques and design industry; 23 of those based in various businesses on London’s Pimlico Road. He now consults for a handful of private clients, buys and sells across many disciplines and is working on a fabric collection.
Instagram: @guytobin2
Website: guytobin.co.uk
Q+A
[001] What is your favourite interior you’ve come across and why?
I am an obsessive collector of images - over 80,000 on my phone at last count - and return to these archives endlessly. My library is currently in storage whilst we renovate which has been a great irritation for the past three years. There is however a strong core of interiors that I return to; Bill Blass’s Drawing Room in NY, Givenchy’s rooms at Le Jonchet, Rose Tarlow’s Living Room in California but at number 1 is David Sylvester’s house in Notting Hill.
I visited the house in the mid-90’s when doing work experience at Spink to take an ancient Egyptian schist bust on approval; it was here that I fully understood what I wanted to do, how I wanted to live, collect and display pieces that would remain in my own collection. Sadly no schist head yet but I do own Barry Flanagan’s etching of Sylvester that sits beside my desk.
[002] What is your favourite piece in your collection?
An impossibly difficult question ... obviously the most recent purchase gets the heart rate up but it’s the thrill of the chase rather than the actual ownership, so once nestled into the collection one almost forgets about it.
That said, I have pieces I have owned for decades or the pieces that I very deliberately gave to my wife to avoid selling; so there must be favourites.
All my pieces by Phoebe Cummings rate high. I recently enabled a commission for her; she has created an astonishing wall garden in varying hues of clay. So I think I will probably say my single peony head by Phoebe; part of her piece ‘Triumph of the Immaterial’ created in 2017 for the V&A. A fountain in raw clay that eroded and dissolved over time as the fountain flowed for one minute each day at noon.
[003] Describe your dream interior if you had no budget restraints.
Lack of budgetary constraint, now that’s nirvana!
All the greatest interiors benefited from such largesse, usually because the creator funded them personally. Thomas Hope at Duchess Street. Sir John Soane’s house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Peggy Guggenheim in Venice. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Townshend House. Ivor Braka in Chelsea.
On the assumption, we are underway with a pretty dreamy set-up in the country, I’d be quite happy with a studio on Glebe Place. Not overly large but with some walls to take pictures at scale.
The vaulted studio would be the focus. First would be the recreation of Alma-Tadema’s drawing room floors at Townshend House; a highly polished almost ebony finish. Walls upholstered in a deep green velvet with edges finished in a distressed giltwood trim. A single central Regency Colza light and then I can go wild with furniture, sculpture and works of art.
[004] What has piqued your interest lately?
My current focus - read obsession - is getting a Brugmansia (Angel’s Trumpet) cutting to flower. It was on its last legs over the winter but it has sprung back with the warmth of Spring.
These can be pretty dangerous plants, inducing a powerful trance and at times temporary insanity if leaves or seeds are ingested. Beautiful but potentially lethal!
[005] Is there an object you regret letting go?
I have been in this business a long time, long enough to realise the cyclical nature of everything. So either that object will reappear, a better version will come along or something completely unrelated will divert one’s attention.
Having said that I have found some wonderful things over the years and the Jean-Pierre Hagnauer silver-plate and petrified wood side table bought in Denmark and subsequently sold in London will be contested hard for when it reappears.
I. ‘Jacques Grange - Recent Work’ by Pierre Passebon
Jacques Grange seems to have no limitations; every century, style, geography and material is mustered in his decorating armoury. There is a wonderful mix of humour, tradition and modernity from room to room and no project is alike.
II. ‘The Destruction of the Country House - 1875 - 1975’ by (Sir) Roy Strong, Marcus Binney and John Harris
The accompanying catalogue to an important show at the V&A Museum that highlighted the disastrous fate of many British houses during the 20th century; in 1955 alone, 48 important houses were destroyed. The book draws together images (& essays) of many of these houses. Each named with its owner, architect, date of construction and its ‘death’ date.
Most powerful for me are the images capturing time capsuled interiors. I would advise John Harris’s books ‘No Voice from the Hall’ & ‘Confessions of a Country House Snooper’ to be read in conjunction with this.
III. ‘The Art Dealers’ by Laura de Coppet and Alan Jones
I am fascinated by the business of the art and antiques trade. Duveen - The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time - is a book I return to frequently.
To paraphrase Mark Twain ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, humans do’ and to learn from previous leaders in one’s industry is vital. Recently discovered, The Art Dealers - written in the early 80’s - contains a series of interviews with leading voices of the time. De Coppet and Jones would make a killer podcast for now.
IG Accounts to follow?
– @eddytemplemorris
– @pinxtonandco
– @elliotdavies.art
– @mbmcstudios
– @leonorahamillstudio
