Q+A #016: Christian Cassiel [Photographer and Founder of Seed Archives]
📚 African and Caribbean Research Library 🎺 The Right Way for an Object to Live 🥤 Cup Carved from Horn 💠Sharing Ideas Across the Diaspora 🛖 Sikien Earthen Dwellings 🔉 Sound System Shrine
‘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.
Christian Cassiel is a British-Jamaican visual artist whose practice is grounded in archival research, material culture, and the study of how people inhabit and transform space. His work examines the relationship between communities and their environments, focusing on the objects, structures, and spatial practices that reveal cultural identity and historical continuity.
He is the founder of Seed Archives, a London-based research library and cultural space holding titles on African and Caribbean art, design, and pre-colonial texts. Set within an intentionally curated home environment that holds traditional African objects and furniture, visitors are actively encouraged to engage with the works on display — with books providing context and a means of connecting with their own identities and histories.
Instagram: @Seedarchives
Website: seedarchives.com
Email: seedinservice@gmail.com
Q+A
[001] What is your favourite interior you’ve come across and why?
One that comes to mind is the home of art collector Sylvaine Sankalé, which I had the pleasure of photographing in Dakar for The World of Interiors last April.
His collection, spanning West African art, furniture and objects, has been slowly built over three decades. Being in a space filled with so many objects carrying such complicated histories and contexts can be quite overwhelming, yet there's a surprising sense of harmony between pieces, which also sit in conversation with the contemporary works of Senegalese artists.
Sylvaine's knowledge and his generosity with his space contribute to that warmth, encouraging you to sit with the works and truly engage with them.
[002] What is your favourite piece in your collection?
I have a few favourites that I love and appreciate in different ways, but currently it’s a cup carved from horn — a gift from the father of an architecture student who came to visit Seed last week. She first came last summer with her parents; her father is a Bamoun chief who sometimes acts as a delegate between Cameroon and the UK. We had a really lovely conversation about traditional objects and how our heritage should be displayed.
These cups are traditional drinking vessels, carved from the horns of animals such as the African buffalo or cow. Historically reserved for royalty and nobles in the Grassfields kingdoms, they were primarily used during ceremonial gatherings, rituals, and for pouring libations of palm wine. He has one that his own father gave to him, and told me I should bring this cup with me when I visit their home for dinner, which feels like exactly the right way for an object like this to live.
[003] Describe your dream interior if you had no budget restraints.
My dream space would be in The Gambia, where I’ve developed a relationship with the land and its people over the last few years. The architecture and materials would be entirely vernacular — built from earth bricks and drawing inspiration from the landscape. There would be a library and gallery celebrating local and international artists, free and accessible to the local community. The Inside and outside world would merge seamlessly; you would feel part of the Gambian ecosystem.
There are many palm trees there, and the terrain is beautiful, so I’d want a second floor that sits at canopy height, so you feel truly immersed within it. I have a vision to build a space where local artisans and designers across the diaspora can share ideas and collaborate. And I would build a bantaba — of earth and palm — which is the Mandinka word for a place where people gather to discuss the matters of the village.
Essentially, a whole expansion of Seed, but rooted on the African continent.
[004] What has piqued your interest lately?
I watched a documentary about earthen domestic dwellings called Sikien, structures that are part fortress, part shrine, part granary. They are the architectural tradition of the Batammariba people of north-eastern Togo and neighbouring Benin. The episode was part of a series by the Met Museum on cultural landmarks across Africa, and the sense of community involved in building and preserving these structures deeply resonated with me.
It opened up a broader conversation I’m interested in around materials and building across the continent. In many villages, you’ll see zinc metal roofing, which to some might read as sophisticated and a sign of development, but it doesn’t really make sense when you consider the climate. There was one woman in the documentary who mentioned that she disliked metal roofing because when it rained, it was too loud to be able to talk. That stayed with me. It made me think much more carefully about the materials we choose when we build, and how they can shape the way we interact with one another.
[005] What’s one thing you own that you won’t ever sell?
I have a stool carved by the Igbo people of Nigeria, which I bought for a pop-up reading installation I worked on last year. I have many objects coming and going through Seed — it’s a natural rotation, and it’s also a small space, so sometimes I have to let things go. But this particular stool became so loved that I just couldn’t part with it.
When visitors first encounter it, they appreciate how finely carved it is, so much so that they’re often hesitant to sit on it. But once they do, they realise just how sturdy and comfortable it is. A perfect blend of beauty and practicality. Things at Seed are meant to be used.
[005] Can you share images of your interior and tell us a bit about it?
Seed is currently a sort of amalgamation of personal objects collected from travels, pieces for sale, books in no particular order, and remnants of past installations, there isn’t really space for anything else. In my mind it’s rather chaotic, but it seems to give everyone a sense of peace, which is all that matters.
I try to arrange the space in a way that allows visitors to engage with it however suits them. People who are more conversational tend to sit in the centre and enjoy sharing ideas with other guests; those who prefer a sense of solitude gravitate toward the corner chair, which I personally recommend, you get a lovely view of the room and a cool breeze from outside.
Music plays an important role in the experience of Seed, and the sound system stands as a kind of shrine — the amplifier resting on an Ashanti stool, because music is sacred, of course. One aspect I particularly enjoy is how traditional objects sit in dialogue with pieces by contemporary makers, such as a shelf by Andu Masebo or a chair by Myles Igwe.
I. ‘The Living Arts of Nigeria’, Edited by Willaim Fagg, 1971
The title caught my attention from the start, specifically the phrase ‘The Living Arts,’ a quiet but deliberate departure from the problematic language of earlier works on African art. The book is beautifully printed, with photographs by Harri Peccinotti celebrating crafts actively practised across Nigeria — pottery, weaving, bronze casting, carving, these are complemented by watercolour illustrations showing each process step by step.
I first came across this copy last summer while browsing antique shops along the coast in Ramsgate. What makes it particularly special is that it’s a limited edition of 500 copies, wrapped in Adire indigo cloth from Abeokuta, signed by everyone involved in its creation — and tucked inside are a photograph of the team and typewritten pages documenting the production process.
II. ‘ETHIOPIA: design & decoration’, 1986
Good books on the material culture of Ethiopia, or East Africa in general, are really quite difficult to find. Seed’s collection is weighted toward West Africa, but I try my best to cover all corners of the continent.
I was quite excited to come across this title, published by the Ethiopian Tourism Commission. I’d recently acquired an Ethiopian stool for a pop-up library space at Union Pacific Gallery and had been researching its origins, so I was pleased to find an example of it documented here. These stools are known to be carved in the Oromo region, particularly around the city of Jimma.
III. ‘Baugh: Jamaica’s Master Potter’, by Laura Tanna and Cecil Baugh, 1999
This is one of those lucky gems you sometimes stumble across in a charity shop. I hadn’t been aware of his work before, but it was a real pleasure to be introduced. This copy is signed by Baugh himself.
Cecil Baugh travelled to England in 1948 aboard the Empire Windrush to study under Bernard Leach, regarded as the father of British studio pottery, at his influential artists’ colony in St Ives, Cornwall. He was the only Black student to have studied with Leach, and the two developed a friendship that lasted for years. Returning to Jamaica, he helped establish what became the Edna Manley College for the Visual and Performing Arts and is credited with initiating the flourishing studio pottery movement on the island.
His work ranged from utilitarian earthenware and the traditional Afro-Jamaican yabba pots to sculptural forms, and he developed a distinctive ultramarine Egyptian Blue glaze after spending some time in Cairo. His work is defined through decades of experimentation with local materials.
IG Accounts to follow?
– @wade.store
– @baoulecore
– @saluiwadistudio
– @an.african.design.canon
– @objectandtheory
