IB: Antiques and objects play an integral role at Charleston…
HN: Yes, they do, it’s things from another time place that the Bloomsbury group gathered to make their house look nice, and to make it livable for them. Sometimes I think it’s necessity that makes them paint otherwise quite plain things in order to jolly them up, and to make it pleasant for themselves. That one room, the dining room and the repeat pattern on the dark wall, I like very much. It makes me think of that group of painters, the Nabis, and specifically Vuillard who used pattern on pattern.
IB: When I look at the things in the Charleston dining room, it reminds me of your plates and your use of repeated pattern motifs in some of your work.
HN: Yes, working with a circular shape, it has always been fascinating to make a border pattern. I find it very exciting to consider that idea of use and display, I like things that are useful. Something you like that you can use, unlike a picture which you see on the wall occasionally. Something which has a use, that you engage with, unlike things on the wall or mantle or shelf which you engage with differently. And so the things that I create can become part of one’s daily life. Visiting 18 Folgate Street, the Dennis Severs House, there is a little note at the front which reads: ‘Instead of just looking at things, think what things can do in a space.’ Objects play an important role to make a place livable, friendly and aesthetic. I think of gardening, where you could have trees, lower shrubs, under plantings, flowers – you need different sizes and importance – one can compare having objects in the home to planting a garden.
IB: There are extraordinary plates in the exhibition, and both the individual or grouped plates almost act like diary entries.
HN: Yes, I just write down things that have to do with that day or that time. But the plate remains a plate regardless of whatever I’ve put on it, whether it is a flower or a bit of writing, and they become quite a touching record of a fleeting time, which one otherwise might forget.
IB: I adore the plate inscribed with Champagne for my Real Friends.
HN: Those are the words of Francis Bacon, and of course there is the reverse Real pain for my Sham friends. I thought that was a good thing to say…
IB: I feel it’s a companion piece to your plate, A Good Queen Always Turns.
HN: I can’t remember where I got that from but in dealing with people who are not queens, they also could turn, start off good and end bad.
In the early 1990s, Hylton was interviewed and photographed for a publication entitled Contemporary Ceramics in South Africa and his work was dubbed as ‘ritual vessels for addressing the great unknown’. In many ways, this idea still holds true, with his plates often conjuring ideas and images, both as ornament and vessel, for use and display. They are objects of pleasure. A cross section of his plates, from naughty homoerotica to a series recording the last few days of 2004, when ‘we supped on pickled tongue of beef and watched Blackadder and someone in the town was stabbed,’ the Charleston House exhibition proves a new survey for the work of the fantastic Mr. Nel.