Max Rollitt wants to bring fun back to the home

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is Max Rollitt. Max has many strings to his bow. He's a restorer of antiques, a maker of fine reproductions, and an interior designer. Out of a restored barn in rural England, he runs all three parts of his business with a combined showroom, design studio, and a poultry workshop. Max's endeavors are well covered by the British press, and he's been featured on House and Garden's Top 100 list for more than a decade. I spoke with Max about why dining rooms are so challenging, why now is a good time to get into the antiques business, and why he wants to bring fun back to the home.

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1:51Enter Ernesta. Custom-size rugs delivered in as little as two weeks. With over 350 styles cut to your client's exact dimensions, you get the rug you need without the weight. And that last-minute client pivot? Not a problem. Join Ernesta's trade program and get dedicated support to help keep every project moving. Visit ernesta.com slash boh to learn more. That's Ernesta.com slash V-O-H. And now, on with the show. So, Max, I was thinking about the fact that when this episode airs, you and I are actually going to be in Wow House the day this drops. It'll be the day of the big gala before it opens to the general public on June 2nd.

2:44Oh, my goodness. I know. Okay. Exciting. And we're going to be standing in this quite lavish and grand looking dining room that I see this beautiful watercolor of. And I mean, again, I hope that your room can live up to this beautiful watercolor that I'm seeing because if so, it's going to be a knockout. But tell me about it. I know you're partnering with Schumacher and you've been no doubt working on it for some time. Tell us. Okay. So it was Schumacher contacted me. We share a mutual PR, Elizabeth Machen, who's our PR agent, and she's the PR for Schumacher in the UK. And what I think it does is it links them into a very English aesthetic.

3:30Yes. And I think that's the attraction to both of us. For me, it's the American market, and for Schumacher, it's the English aesthetic. And I think that's the idea is to tie us all together. and it had to be done in a very short period of time you know it was literally like okay so this is it and you have to have your presentation by the end of next month so fortunately we had christmas in the in the intervening period excellent and uh i would sneak off um from the from the from the family shenanigans and and and go upstairs and draw pretty pictures and my son was down and we work a lot together, Edward Roderick and I, and we just thought about it.

4:16And the dining room is not an obvious place to start for anybody. It's always slightly challenging. It's become in a way less important. I think people entertain in different ways nowadays. And Edward and I decided that we were going to make it moody, really, really moody. And how are we going to do that? We're going to make it rich. And we were going to light it in a way that was more dusk than just standard studio lights or showroom lights. So we've got a whole lighting rig going in, which is casting daylight through those windows that you see at the back of the image. And we'll see if it all works.

5:01Well, and we should say to listeners who might not be familiar, so the remarkable thing about daylight coming in through the windows is that this is a house that is literally built within a design center. Exactly, yeah. It all has to be man-made. So it's a real contrivance, exactly. Yes, but I love that light is pouring in through the windows in this watercolor. And you've got a beautiful chandelier. And as you were referencing, so in America, there is a feeling, and I often get quite worked up about it, Max, that the dining room is under attack, that people are getting rid of their dining rooms, that people aren't, that dining rooms don't play this central role in bringing the family together in a way that they once did.

5:43I think that's because we lack the formality. We lack the idea of dressing up and actually, and to feel relaxed in a grand environment is, wearing casual clothes is difficult. So we're just trying to bring all of that together. So you feel relaxed. You feel at ease. There is some formality and grandeur because why not play into that and just be exuberant? Yes. You know, we sort of lack that sometimes. We lack exuberance. We lack play. We lack fun in the home. And I think that's what I'm trying to introduce. Well, there's a feeling in America that to your point about lacking exuberance, somebody was writing and commenting recently that people are almost afraid to sort of lean into their real personality and let color through and let exuberance through.

6:44And so we end up with, I don't want to pick on beige, but we end up with beige or gray or a lot of these sort of neutral tones, in part just because people are holding themselves back for some reason. Do you sense that as well in where you are? I think that's come and gone. Really? I think that's, yeah. I feel you can't do that anymore. And it's now we're in a place where people are like struggling to find their position. I think if you go into you know that whole form of decoration has gone and I think people need to be educated back into something that is more colourful and how to make that work also I feel like the more ornate will return as well it's inevitable you know it's like we need that and I just think you know that's richness And we need that richness rather than bland.

7:45A bland, you know, white has its place, definitely, but it works with other colors too. Right. You know, and I think let's work on that. And I think ornament has its place. I work, as you know, with a lot of antique furniture and objects, and there's such richness and delight within all of that ornament. and to sort of almost banish it is, it just feels like tragic, you know. And I feel, I've felt this for a while. I feel like the fineness of detail has to at some time come back. And I think the technological skills are now returning to that point where we will be able to have that again. I think it's all been lost through, you know, everything becoming mechanized and people, you know, people producing things for simplicity's sake.

8:43And now technology is taking us to a point where we can put ornament back into pieces, you know, with CNC machines and laser cutting and all of that. It's not as difficult as it used to be. Yeah. I mean I visited Matthew Bray and Matthew Collins who are helping me with with the decoration of all the woodwork and the distressing the dado and the the the windows and the fireplace and they they are literally scanning ornament with a phone they're then 3D printing it and And then they're casting it from the 3D printing thing. And they are making fantastic bronze handles and all sorts of things, which historically would have just been so difficult and taken so much time.

9:38It's quite incredible. So I think we'll see a lot more of it. So is that some of the detail that we're going to see in the room that you're describing? We're not going to see that, no. we're going to see what we're going to see in the room is some fantastic damask fabric which is going to hang all over the which we're going to clad all the walls in and then there's several pieces of beautiful antique furniture and then some of our bespoke items that we manufacture So there's a new dining table and some new occasional tables. And there's a table after William Kent that's been made by my son, Will, who's 23 next week or something.

10:28and that's model that I I had a leg that I I I got in a swap deal with another antique dealer years ago which was sat in my workshop forever and um I was walking through Chatsworth um a couple of years ago and noticed that this leg matched exactly at the leg on a table by William Kent at Chatsworth and so we've we've taken that leg and turned it into a six-legged side table with sea scroll freeze and I put on an antique mahogany top and so it looks the part and he's done a fantastic job so that's exciting to have his piece of work there. And so tell me, let's talk about this business that you've built because much like this table in your dining room there's a lot of legs to your business and a lot of different facets.

11:23What path do you take and And where does it lead you? Yes. So after leaving university, I found by living in a community in Wales, I bumped into various people and found a chap called Kevin May, who was making furniture out of recycling and making furniture in a very amateur way. But he obviously really enjoyed it. And I actually latched onto that and I thought, okay, making furniture, working with something material and actually being physical and in contact with what I'm making was very attractive. So I thought, okay, so I'll try and go to furniture college. And to get to furniture college, I felt like I had to have some knowledge at least apart from everything that had been passed on from my mum's business.

12:12so I got a job working as a French polisher. And explain what that is for people who aren't familiar because that's a lot of layers and right and really I mean. French polishing is a technique which is applying shellac to the surface of furniture but the joy of the shellac is that you can actually get a high shine without putting on a large amount of the shellac So you put it on, you rub it down, you put it on, you rub it down. So actually, it looks like the wood is glowing rather than there being a varnish on it. And the French did it to a very high shine so that it looked bright and really energetic.

12:59And the English, like everything, restrained and sort of not too loud. Anyway, so I learned how to do the very shiny bit. and uh and that got me into college and i did i i was lucky i had a got a worked with a bunch of mature students i got on a mature students course and everybody was teaching each other and i was like just soaking it all up very excited and uh and that was only a year so i left after a year and then i i had to get a i had to get a job and i got a job working in winchester with a chap called Chris Frierson. He was really good. So he got work working for the London trade and a couple of really good dealers.

13:47And he was, because of his capability, they'd send him really difficult things to do. So he'd swear a lot and get cross. But actually he cared a lot. He was really devoted to it. So I learned an awful lot. And also not only learned, because I found out that I was skillful, but I also learned from him how to work, you know, and how to be work efficiently and on time in a cost effective way. And that's, that's really important. And it's something that is, unless you have someone driving you like that, who's going to actually really force you to get on. I think it's really difficult to, for people to, to learn and to learn how to work efficiently and how to be employable.

14:32You know, that apprentices system was really good. And that was like five years. No, I was there for seven years in the end because it was really good, interesting work. And after seven years, my mother said she was retiring,

14:51which I think was a pretense just to lure me into the business because she was feeling a bit older and frail. but also I wanted to take that restoration and make it my own because I'd learned to set it's like learning how to paint in a certain way a certain form from a master and then you need to learn you need to make it your own and that so that was that was my opportunity really so I set I set up my own shop and my own restoration business as well so people discovered you and And soon they were bringing you antiques to restore and you were making things? Yeah, I didn't actually work for anybody else from then on.

15:33I bought things, I bought problems and I solved them. And I solved them. Yeah, I suppose that's the way you look at it. And also, we know what we want now. We know what works and we still buy things that sometimes need too much work. But there's a joy in it. You know, there's a joy in putting things back, bringing things back to life.

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16:50well so the business that you have today has so mom mom does retire and all of all of that so it's partially a restoration business but you also make bespoke pieces and right and you i started yeah i start i started making bespoke pieces because of this i could see there's a shortage in the market you know i'd buy a really beautiful sofa and i knew that it's not repeatable And that sofa was saleable, and that's what people were looking for. And I'm diversifying in what I make as well. So it's not just upholstery. It's not just tables. I'm doing quite a lot of lighting. I'm going to be going into other fields soon.

17:31Ooh, anything you can tell us there, Max? I'm looking at fabrics. Whether actually the world wants Max Roller Fabrics is another thing altogether. I feel like it's a world that has a surfeit of fabric, But then there's always the tastemakers and perhaps I could tempt people. Well, so, I mean, tell me how actual decorating comes along for you in all of this. That happened like 2005, I think. I had this really nice man, Richard, came into my shop. He was young. He was probably 35 and quite traditionally dressed. and he said, I really like your things, and I'm trying to buy a house locally, and I like your things.

18:20Could I look around your house? And I went, yeah, of course. Literally, I lived around the shop, so I took him upstairs, and he said, oh, this is perfect. Would you help me with my house? Turned out he was a very successful hedge fund manager. Oh, okay. So he bought a very nice house locally, and I worked on it and I cut my teeth on that and it worked really well and we got on really well and it got published in House and Garden and he had a colleague who had bought a house in London and his wife was an architectural historian and she bought this beautiful house in Holland Park and she loved Sir John Soane and she just wanted to push her house a little bit in that direction.

19:07What an opportunity! and I was able to play. You know, fortunately, money was no real restriction and I was just able to get on with it. And we created something quite special, I think. And that, again, got into a magazine and then it sort of teetered on and rolled on and grown since then. It's all grown very gently, you know? It's not your elaborate business plan. that's come to life. No, no, there's no elaborate business plan, I'm afraid. No, it's just grown organically. And I've had lean times. I went into the pandemic with no work, you know, and I just thought, what is going to happen? And I came out of the pandemic with 11 serious inquiries.

20:02And out of that, I think four or five were really serious. and it's been good ever since. And the range is quite ridiculous. The sort of breadth of what we're working on is wonderful. I'm just doing a large, really beautiful house up on the Scottish borders, which is in the sort of Edinburgh, Newtown, Georgian school. It's a big sort of stately home. And then I'm working on an 18th century barn, which is adjacent to a property that I've already done and and it's essentially making sense and use of this beautiful big space so that's almost more much more conceptual so and then we're working on a big another big stately home up in Herefordshire which is which is again a wonder and and but that's just more curation it's looking after the house it was that was worked on by john fowler and oh my goodness all his colors which is quite extraordinary to see these sort of lots of lime greens and and pinks and and grays and a lot of um overdressing well so what do you do in a situation like that when when john fowler has been there before you Well, it's a sensitive touch.

21:27I think there's a bit of cleaning to be done, definitely. Inevitably, these things just get a little tarnished over time. So we're working on that. And there's a fantastic collection of furniture that has just dried up. You know, it's literally all the polish has sort of lost its luster. So it's a case of restoring that as well. We have to reinvigorate it. We have to make it into a family home, this big stately home, into a family home. We have to bring this furniture back to life. We have to bring John Fowler back into the building. And so that's exciting. We've got a Scottish house which was painted white.

22:08And, you know, this is, you know, it's beautiful, strong architecture. We have to, again, enliven it and put some joy back into it. And then this barn, which is, what are you going to do with a big barn? You know, it's a couple and they've got a big barn. You have to make sense of it, and you have to, how are we going to use this so that it doesn't feel just overwhelming and too vast? It's fascinating. And this cottage or nay is just ridiculous because the house isn't very nice, but it's in a fantastic position, and it's all facing the wrong way. So now we've just got to make it work. And balancing all of those different elements and, you know, the fenestration and getting all the textures right is always, yeah.

22:54And that's what I've lived for, it feels like, saying this to you. Well, I mean, it does seem like you've talked in the past about comfort and joy at whatever level. So tell me about that. Tell me about that philosophy and how you think about that and how that comes into your work. Well, I think, you know, I'm very much a family man who wants to imbue good values and richness, as in sort of cultural richness, into my family's life. And I think I've learned so much from being around beautiful things. They give me so much in return. And I feel like objects and beautiful surroundings can do that.

23:47They can be enriching. Like beautiful music, you know, it sits within you. It's reflective. Your environment is really, really important. So trying to create that for people is a privilege. It's an absolute privilege. And how much do clients give you a free hand? How much do they just turn things over to you and say, Max, I trust you, go to town, do what you want? They don't trust you until they know you. You know, they can see what they see on paper or in print or in the hot air that, you know, my PR blows out very regularly and they're very impressive. Very impressive. It's effective at flowing out that hot air on your behalf.

24:40I know. It has, right? I know, but until you actually meet someone and understand and sort of come here maybe and see what we have in our barn. You've got a barn yourself, you were referencing, but I mean, you've got a great big barn. And also the way we choose things. You know, I buy antiques just, I buy things sometimes because they're academically significant, but that has to be aligned also with their beauty. And everything has to be beauty and there has to be feedback, it feels like. That's the important thing. Well, and that's also part of what I'm wondering. Are clients looking to you to buy investment-grade antiques?

25:23Are you saying to them, oh, this is going to only increase in value or minimally it's going to maintain the value? I think that's the story in my parents' generation, really. Is that what your parents would do? Yeah, absolutely. And it was a fact. It was, you know, that was very valid. There was a Devon antique dealer who used to actually, on his invoices, write a guarantee that he would purchase the item back for the price that he'd sold it for within three years because he knew that the item was increasing in value all of the time. Does it feel that way today? No. No, nowadays it's you are buying from, it's like you go into a shop because somebody has made a choice for you.

26:12Somebody is putting something in front of you that they feel has merit. And in my case, I've chosen it, I've restored it, I've contextualized it. And I think that's the point. So that's where I add on value. And also things fit together. I can make things fit together in a way that some people just wouldn't understand, especially when you're dealing with antiques, which is not part of our common parlance now. Nobody talks about it. Nobody understands what these things are, really. No. And how did that happen? Why did we stop being taught or educated about all of that? Because the market just disappeared.

26:55the market it became overvalued you know it just became it reached a point where where we were just think everything was overvalued it was everybody wanted it and then it was just like well if everybody wants it i don't want it right you know and then that rolls on and then nobody wants it you know so and now you know i look at things and stuff has been a lot of stuff is over restored a lot of stuff is very dark and very brown and austere and we're not really in that we don't really want that level of austerity or that level of formality so actually creating a dining room for schumacher is again quite quite tricky you know how do it how do we get rid of that formality how do we speak to this current market in the time that we're in yeah yeah through a room that is often laden with tradition and heritage.

27:57Yeah, and I don't know how it's going to go. Don't know how it's going to be received, frankly. Because I think there's also that point where actually one client I had who was a famous modern art dealer, New York modern art dealer, and she said to me, I was working on a house in Connecticut, and I said, but what are you going to do with this house? She said, well, I don't collect friends. I just you know some rooms are just nice to look at and that's really important and if you have a large house you just you you walk through some spaces they just have to be beautiful and they have to hold their beauty and often I in a house I use the dining room almost as a hallway as an you know a thoroughfare as a useful thoroughfare and I think that's that's a way to look at it as well.

28:49With your family, when the kids were growing up, was the dining room a very central room for you? Were you all having dinner together regularly? We all have dinner together regularly, in fact, but not in a dining room. We did have a dining room, and then we inherited this vast piano. Which took over a great deal of the space. Granny's Concert Grand, which wasn't going to be let go of by my wife. and now takes over the whole of the old dining room. I see. Making it impossible to have meals. Making it impossible to have a dining room. So now we all sit at the table, and we all eat together. And in fact, we had a friend come to stay for two nights, and she said, Max, is there any chance I could see the rest of your house?

29:41Because we've just sat at this table the whole time.

29:48So sitting and eating and talking is ridiculously important. And it's so central, which is why it always saddened me a little bit to think of the dining room being pushed aside in some way. I think, yes, absolutely. And I think let's embrace that. Let's turn up for dinner looking good. I often wear a suit or something really smart, and my friends will go, what are you doing? Love it. And you're just like, well, it's dinner time. We're here to be together and sort of just feel special. I want to come back to the antique market because I'm fascinated. This is the business of home, remember. Exactly, Max.

30:32Okay, so could we bring it back to business for heaven's sakes? I'm curious what you make of sort of A, the state of the antiques market in general. So this collectibles market seems to be very, very hot in this country. We've had several auctions recently that have caught a lot of people's attention. The Lalonde mirrors going for tens of millions of dollars. And even Mr. Newhouse's art collection going for vast sums beyond what they had estimated, It's suggesting that for the right collectible pieces, for the right art, the market seems very much alive. And I wonder what your take on that is and how it shows up in your world.

31:18I think the world has become much, obviously, I talked about the collapse of the antiques trade and how it's reduced in size. And now I just feel like it's really, we're all very, very focused on what we're doing. The limited amount of antique dealers. So there's a strong core of antique dealers, and there's a lot of auctions that are still sort of rattling on. And there are a few auctions who are actually taking stuff as antique dealers are from auctions and putting it into their auction and then putting it out to market. So I think the antiques market is strong. I think it's a great time to become an antique dealer or go into the business because it has been so depressed for so long.