Max Rollitt on Interior Decorating, Sentimentality & the Home as Autobiography

0:01If you're sourcing from stuff that you love, then you're actually putting that love into a home.

0:09It's very embedded in the chalk, which is what we live in. Chalk is really important to me, just the feel of it. There's something about it. I feel very at home within it.

0:24I feel totally at home. I don't want to be anywhere else. There's other places that bring me great, great joy, but this is definitely home.

0:37Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Homing. Today's guest is the esteemed interior decorator and antique dealer, Max Rollett. I've come to see Max at his farmhouse near Winchester, which he shares with his wife, Jane, and a pair of flatulent dogs. Max is a friend of mine, and I can say with certainty that he's a family man with a very big heart. What's amazing is that he's got museum quality art and antiques going through his hands every day, but he lives in a humble way with things that have little monetary value. Every object in his home has a fascinating story to tell. Max doesn't usually talk about this, but he reveals the importance of spirituality in his life.

1:22He and Jane meditate together every morning, and during the summer they sleep in a yurt in the garden, where they can be closer to the earth and the air. His home is set low down in a chalk valley, and he tells me how he feels more at home on that patch of land than anywhere else. We filmed a house tour to go alongside this podcast, which is, as always, available on Patreon to subscribers, and I really can't recommend it enough. Max gets very emotional as he shows me the objects people have made for him or given to him over the years, and I think it's the best one we've done so far. so as always you'll find that at patreon.com slash homing with matt in the meantime here is the podcast and i really hope you enjoy it hi max hi don't look so scared um we should probably set the scene of where we are first of all so in your lovely kitchen um in your old farmhouse which we're in the south downs national park here are we we are just yeah just about so we just got the river itch and running right just at the bottom yeah so we're on a kind of very level ground close to the river quite close to winchester which is about an hour south of london on the train that's right yeah and i think the bulk of the podcast i'd love to talk to you about this house and your kind of current life but it's always really instructive to go back first so um tell me about where you grew up so i as far as i can remember i've grown up in winchester so i think we moved i moved here when i was four um and went to primary school prep school and next school after that all in winchester and so was it the same house through your whole childhood yeah my parents bought it in 1959 and i think we sold it in 2009 so so it was 50 years they they owned it wow it's astonishing that's quite rare isn't it it is right but i um so my mum when when we moved there she was freelancing as a fashion designer she'd grown she'd she'd basically been in fashion since she finally managed to leave home at age 28 she was brought up in Leek in Staffordshire and her mum had a dress shop and and milliners and my mum was sort of left school at 13 as you did then and she went to night school at Burslem School of Art which was the set up in the potteries for basically people to train to paint the ceramics that all came out of Stoke and she went to Bertham School of Art to do fashion and she was really good and she ran away at 22 to London and her mum went down to London and brought her back to work in the shop and eventually she ran away again aged 28 and that time she managed to make a full escape um and it was it was rare for a woman to be that forthright and independent i think at that at that time and especially to find a place in the in the fashion world and she became her thing was blouses that's what she became notorious for so i grew up with her pattern cutting and sewing and she would basically freelance for these and sell her designs.

5:04Age seven, she decided she needed to do something more centered in Winchester and so she took on a shop and she didn't know what she was going to do with the shop. She just knew she was a good shopkeeper. You mean when you were seven? When I was seven, yeah. And she knew she knew about fabrics and she knew about antiques because with her father she'd gone to auctions. And also Winchester was a great hub for the antiques market. So she basically got the Colfax account, which was a significant thing. I think she was the first person in Hampshire to have a Colfax and Fowler account for fabrics. What does that mean to people that wouldn't know?

5:44What does that mean? Yeah. Okay, so Colfax and Fowler, I think at that time, which was the early 70s, were the house of chintz essentially. that's what they were really fantastic at so she was able to sort of bring that to the ladies of winchester and so consequently i grew up but showing the ladies of winchester which fabric could go which which showing them through the books uh we had vast collection of different swatches and also i was taken every day through this um antique shop in winchester this is in the holidays through Blanchards which was an enormous um antiques emporium essentially uh in the center of Winchester and it was an institution anything good from the south of England went through Blanchards so it was a different age of antique dealing but essentially my mum would go source there and the stuff would be shipped down to you know 200 yards down to her shop and then she would sell it from her shop onto somebody else and just going back to the home I think she was um she was furnishing it with the things that she really loved so I remember we had a gold damask wallpaper going all the way up the staircase which looking back on it was quite bold for a terraced house and the bathroom was um similarly wallpapered you know why would you wallpaper bathroom it was and carpeted you know everything was carpeted it was a different feel but it's also had a great sort of comfort to it as well and you needed that comfort because you know a bath would only be three inches deep if you were lucky because the immersion heater wasn't big enough and we had um we had a tough growing up no it was a night storage heaters i don't know it was pre pre-central heating it felt like yeah yeah so we lit a fire every night um and winchester was a much quieter place so what do you think of in terms of that home in terms of what it sort of meant to you emotionally if you think back to it now it was a place of freedom i think my parents were always um they were encouraging and i was an only child and they there was there was a lot of opportunity to just do what I wanted you know um I didn't really feel in any way tied so I could rearrange my bedroom or I could you know have a band practice in the kitchen or you know whatever it was all it was all it was and the garden was long it was long and deep and there was an old air raid shelter in the bottom of it so it was like another quiet space in that you know there was lots of room for us it was a bit just william exploration yeah you know yeah that sort of thing and neighbors who you could chat to yeah over the wall yeah yeah yeah that's nice um what about your dad uh my dad my dad was uh in the navy until i was again until i was about seven um he was he was a big man like me but sort of broader um and he was a very much a gentleman and very very loving i think he in some ways he played second fiddle to my mom because she was very much the personality she was the salesperson she was um she was she was the front of the household really and a strong force they were both from working class backgrounds and both aspirational to be into another realm i think not in a sort of clingy way but they just saw that life was sweeter, I think, in that, and safer in that environment.

9:57Having grown up with parents who'd been in the First World War, living through the Second World War, it's a very different time. Yeah, yeah. And what kind of parents were they to you? They were very empowering. I you know I went to um Winchester College which wasn't great pastorally and I probably came out quite damaged from that um and but when I got my A-level results I got two two E's and an O which for those that don't know is really bad this is not great um for somewhere that is meant to be the most academic private school in the country that is appalling but I went up I remember my parents were that time they were in twin beds for some reason and it was a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory it feels like looking back at it and anyway I went and told them my mum's face sort of dropped and my father turned around and said well done son you've got two A levels that's really good that's amazing yeah that's really amazing so that's you know that's that's and i was a you know i dropped out after that i went to university for a year wanted to be a buddhist monk dropped out of university i didn't know this lived lived with a bunch of freaks in an old ale house in Wales, fixed cars.

11:30Hang on, what? Tell us about that. It was a drover's pub outside Newtown in Powys. And Newtown is lovely, but not that pretty. And this pub, I think, cost us£5 a month. And we could sign on from there, so we could scavenge off the state, and we got postal signing, which meant that we didn't actually have to go and sign on because we were so remotely positioned. So it basically gave me enormous freedom to actually do what I wanted. And whilst I was there, I used to go over and fix this Austin Hereford car with a mate, Kevin May. And he basically, he called himself a barn dancer. So what his job was, was actually taking down old barns and then rebuilding them in the home counties or whatever for people's party barns or garages or whatever.

12:35And from the offcuts, he used to make these copies of medieval furniture that he looked at in the V &A, and he would make copies. And I just thought this was inspiring to see this machinery and see these things being, you know, crafted from one thing and turned into another. And I just thought, actually, that's probably where my home is. It's probably, it's actually in making things. So fixing cars was really difficult. And also, I don't like metal. it's it you know you you go to tighten your tappets and the the nut slips and you rip all your fingers you know the top of your knuckles off and everything rusts and goes hard and and metal splinters are horrible you know they go in but they don't come out as a piece like a piece of wood does very important part yeah um yeah so anyway so i so i thought okay i want to be a a woodworker okay well let's come on to that but i just want to just rewind a sec no it's okay because you said something really interesting because you're just trying to picture you at this venerable academic institution which is winchester college yeah and you you said that the pastoral care wasn't great yeah and you came out with you know not great results yeah um what was going on there i think basically i'm i think nowadays i'll be diagnosed as dyslexic okay you know uh essentially the teaching was going over my head yeah whereas at prep school i i could be thoroughly involved and absolutely loved it yeah the teaching really suited me it was probably quite officious or something but you know i learned my french i learned my latin i really enjoyed my maths um and then i went to a school which was teaching and the teaching literally just went straight over my head so i just dropped like a stone um i didn't get i think looking back at it what i needed was what i'm good at is i'm very visual and i an art education would have been really fantastic um but the art lecturer was suspiciously predatorial so i sort of stayed away from that oh wow um the woodworking teacher was amazing mr proctor um but i didn't really i didn't take my opportunity there to sort of get involved the facilities were amazing but i just I was always trying to catch up I was always sort of you know one step behind you're not the first person that I've spoken to on the podcast to say that they are or probably are dyslexic which which and I I mentioned that because I talked to a lot of creative people yeah let's just say that academically you found things challenging because of the way you process information yeah what what on the flip side what does that give you though as a positive because i think it does have a real positive as well that doesn't it i mean can you just describe how how it makes you think in a certain way i think visually i think everything is visual i can remember everything visually okay um and my job everything i look at is my my job i look at as as painting you know my creative work I look at as painting.

16:12And I can, you know, I've reached an age where I forget everybody's name, but I can remember what they look like. And I think when I read, I think I take 75 % of it in, but there's another part of it that doesn't quite work. I remember reading, we had to read Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy. and um i remember sat on the on the steps in my mom's shop trying to read it and i had to read i read the first page seven times because i just couldn't couldn't understand it and then it clicked and i was away but it took me and i really loved it i really just loved the imagery of of the writing but it took that long to sort of engage in it yeah so you're an only child and um that comes with it um certain uh conditions certain characteristics sometimes did did that feed into um how you got on with other people at school or probably yeah yeah i think it's it it's quite isolating do you feel isolated yeah i think i but i it's isolated but also there's this contentment because you're quite contented within your with yourself i i actually enjoyed school but i'm just saying it wasn't very good as far as as far as the pastoral care was they didn't get their money's worth let's say your parents no no okay so let's have a look at your path to becoming who you are professionally yeah so you mentioned kevin may there yeah so let's just continue that story so kind of what what happened from there so you you you sort of you you didn't have a university education no you decided that you were gonna do something hands-on well kevin may taught me where there's a may there's a way oh yeah well done kevin um and basically so so so what i did once Once I decided that's what I wanted to do, I thought, how am I going to get into this?

18:26And I got, I had no experience, no reason why any college would take me. So I thought, okay, I'll learn, what trade can I learn? And there was a guy who was doing French polishing up in Hartley-Whitney, and he agreed to take me on, paid me a pittance. But I basically, for nine months, he taught me how to French polish. So I was there in a workshop with five other people, ruining bits of furniture, because we were stripping all of the beautiful old patina off and then polishing it up to a high shine, which French polish is. It's a technique of using shellac, where you basically fill the grain and create this high finish.

19:15It taught me one trade, and I carried on to do that, and I set up my own workshop for nine months. And then I got into a furniture college, which is Rycote Wood, which was then in Tame. It's now in Oxford. Historically, it was an arts and crafts college. So it taught woodwork and agricultural engineering. And I was lucky enough to get onto a mature students course because I was all of 20 then. But what was great about it was it was full of these mature people who were all passionate. so they came with quite a lot of knowledge already and they were trying to sort of just change their career so they were it was they were often at sort of in their mid-40s or late 30s mid-40s so it was so they were desperate to learn but they also were incredibly earnest as well so we're able to all learn from each other the lecturers were there but essentially we were there in the workshop from nine till seven at night making these things i mean looking back at it very amateur but you know some of us were were lucky enough to sort of get real benefit from it and i left there and um went and worked as trained as i got a job as an apprentice antique restorer i was lucky enough to be in this workshop with just one other bloke who trained at blanchards the the um shop in winchester but he had he was he was he had a great wit and uh was got these fantastic jobs from some top end dealers so we worked on wonderful things and had to reinvent other people's mistakes or sort of you know not reinvent them but sort of correct historic mistakes or old repairs and consequently you learn an awful lot about form and patination so then my mum said you want to take over the shop and she wanted to retire and I said yeah okay and I needed more room so we bought the shop over the road which was a pet shop and it but it was a four-story Georgian shop um and I dug out the cellar made it another foot taller inside so I could stand up and I turned that into the workshop so I had a workshop in the basement and then I had three I had two stories of um showroom and then I had the top floor was where i lived okay and then i i read that you got a stand at the olympia art and antiques yeah i i yeah my mum didn't retire she said she was going to oh so she just hung around

22:15um but i dealt with it i had lots of therapy and sort of worked my way through that and we ended up on very good terms until I booted around um you know I'd grown up as I said with this sort of high-end furniture and that's what I was interested in and so I started exhibiting at um the antiques for at Olympia which at the time was thriving and started to meet some really interesting dealers you know and decorators and I think it was the decorators that really sort of engaged and sparked my curiosity about about that whole world so it and also the American market and the American market was strong and has remained sort of stable within my business and I over the years so I did that from 96 until 2008 I think so for 12 years and that started once a year then it became three up to three times a year I was doing that and that was really my source of income but you know I was meeting some really good people and I used to sell to Michael Smith, Axel Vervaort, Colfax and Fowler, who had a big decorating department, and some very good other decorators as well, Via Grenny, Chester Jones, and on.

23:45Yeah, Guy Goodfellow. Okay, so you were reaching a certain echelon there. Yeah. And then what's interesting is that now you yourself are a decorator in that mould. Yes. so you've gone from selling dealing in antiques to now obviously clearly being asked to create whole spaces for people what how did that come about that that was just um a lovely man came into the shop and said i want to buy a house locally and and i like the way you do your home okay i said are you sure and i took him upstairs and he went yes that's absolutely what what what what i want when you say i like your home do you mean that the shop and he liked the shop and the feel of the shop and everything that was in it and then you know he asked to see around my house and and i showed him and he really just liked the feel of it and i think that's what he he felt really comfortable in and so we did his house that was in i think 2006 and and and it got into house and garden and it sort of went on from there okay yeah so now nowadays if if someone's listening to this and they're not familiar with what you do how would you describe the max rollett interior you're you're grinning because what because you've had to have you had to like storyboard this or something recently the max rollett interior currently my work is threefold i i'm i i i have still have a very strong antiques business which is which is my joy and we also we we manufacture furniture as well but that's sort of very much um that originated from sort of filling in this the gaps that i couldn't of things that i couldn't find okay um and drawing on my knowledge as a restorer etc to give things some sort of richness and patination in this sort of so that's to make them special within that whole furniture market um but a max rodder interior is is well i have this enormous resource i have basically the the barn that i have um i i i buy what i like so i just uh i i don't buy specifically for any projects i just buy things that i feel are special that have some that say something to me and as a consequence I have an enormous resource you know I have a 5 ,000 square foot barn actually I've got more storage now as well and as a consequence I think the way I decorate is is what I always equate it to put to painting a picture I actually start with the furniture so i start with how things are going to work and the scale and how things are going to work both in plan but also the movement of the of of you know in in height around the room that's really really important just so there's some it's not all working on one plane so there's sort of there's definitely some range and then i start thinking about color and texture and how all of that's going to work and once I've got some idea of that then I can start to furnish it and I don't know it's it's hard to really sort of outline it but essentially it's a layering effect where I'm sort of building up this like like painting an oil painting you're sort of building up these different layers of um color but then adding to them with more texture and there's highlights and pops and richness so and humor there has to be sort of something sort of left field or something that doesn't really it's there's nothing for i mean i don't know it's formulaic to me but i don't think it's obviously formulaic in its in its in its approach because there's a sort of random nature to it.

28:05And I think if you're sourcing from stuff that you love, then you're actually putting that love into a home. Yeah. Yeah. I totally get that. Yeah. But I think that where you may differ, I think, from other decorators is that you're starting from your barn of incredible stuff and using that as the first layer, which I think is really interesting. Are you buying all the time and where are you buying from and how do you go about that process? So I think it's about between 30 and 50 things a month that I buy. I buy from other dealers. I buy from antique fairs and I also buy from auctions. So there's a lot of sifting that goes on.

28:59there's an awful lot of choice out there you know there's everything is now available to you so it's it's really it's a it's a sort of massive sifting job and i have um lucy who helps me and is a great help basically at sourcing um and she will present um some things to me and often it sets me off on another direction or basically I can look at this auction and then oh yes so I'll look at that yes but what else is there there and then and and like all of these things you know if you have those people who are giving you inspiration or presenting things that you wouldn't necessarily look at that also brings in another um another element which is really important so there's this whole sifting and there's this sort of input as well which is really valuable yeah okay let's talk about this place yes so your home yeah you've been here how many years now i think since 2009 okay um just tell me about the genesis of this why did you buy this place and how did you come about it i wanted to always wanted to live in the countryside the first house that i rented was uh a council flat and it had a it was a first floor first floor maisonette in a village and it had a garden that you had to walk down a long path to get to and you got to this garden and it had i basically grew vegetables very badly you know i i can always still smell the coriander seeds where they're bolted and you know gone mad um but i just thought yeah i'm very very much at home in the countryside yeah and um so 2009 my parents passed away and and so jane and i thought okay let's look for a slightly larger home and we basically went on one of those websites and went through farmhouses at this price.

31:17And this was the second one down. Anyway, we came across this one. It was under offer. And I thought, let's go and look at it anyway. Let's have a go. And it was smaller than we expected as a home, but actually it had all of these extra outbuildings, which have just proved, you know, I could see were going to be just invaluable, really. So was that the real draw then, the outbuildings? I mean, obviously the house as well, Yeah, but the house, no, the house is actually, I think people say that you're always going to be as happy as the house that you grew up in. You know, the same sort of scale.

31:54And actually, that's funny enough, I think this is about the same. You know, it's very embedded in the chalk, you know, which is what we live in. Chalk is really important to me just as for just the feel of it. There's something about it. I feel very at home within it. How interesting. Why is that? I don't know. I always think of going to the New Forest and it's like that's acid soil and it's just like poison to me. It's really weird. And I'm very affected. Yeah, I think it's just that environment. I feel really sort of at home here in this sort of, on this chalk bed that we're on with the river running below it.

32:39I love that. I really love that, Max. No, the idea that we have a sort of terroir that we kind of belong to. Yeah, really important. Yeah. Yeah. So describe the landscape here then and why you like it. So here we're just on, we're basically in the valley, in the Itchin Valley, and we're just about four foot above the river currently. But we're on chalk, so we're safe. Okay. because it'll all drain into the chalk when the flood comes.

33:14And in the field that is next to the river, in our field, there used to be a priory, which was associated with the Nunnaminster in Winchester. And that was dissolved by Henry VIII. And then I assume, well, there certainly is, parts of that Nunnaminster have been reused. So the coin stones on the back of the house are all con stones. And then there's various elements in the kitchen. There's a corner figure sort of in Tudor, no earlier than Tudor, medieval dress sort of holding up the corner of the kitchen. And then on the outside of the kitchen wall, there's three gargoyles that were obviously taken from or figures that were taken from.

33:58And up the stairs and in the house, there are various oak beams that have been reused. um from from that priory so yeah so the house is built basically um there's a big estate here and this was the dairy for the estate so the front of the house is brick and flint no it's just brick to sort of make it um look good from the road and the rest is all stone and flint yeah yeah i live not very far from here yeah and sometimes and to be found marauding past your front door yes in my running kit yeah give you a wave um but i i love the context of this house because it's sort of got quite a steep hill you know coming down to it so you definitely feel very sort of settled here yes yeah um as you say you're close to the river um i don't know it's got quite it feels very english it feels quite ancient to me um how do you feel about that sort of sense of belonging that we all strive for in our home because the home is the bricks and mortar of the place but it's also the area we're in the context that we're in so how do you feel about how you kind of belong to this piece of the earth if you see what i mean um i feel totally content within it to be honest i I think we also have a yurt that we put in the garden.

35:26And we often sleep in that during the summer. And that, again, is sort of part of feeling grounded. It's important just to feel that every now and then, just to feel the air and the earth. And it feels really, really good. And so I think here I feel totally at home. I don't want to be anywhere else. There's other places that bring me great, great joy, but this is definitely home. Oh, yeah. That's such a nice feeling to have, isn't it? Yeah, it is, yeah. Do you think you'll be here forever then? I suspect so. Yeah. My wife is not keen to move under any circumstances. She doesn't want to move. No, she doesn't want to move, and I think I totally understand that.

36:14I think it might get a little lonely in my old age, but I think we might have a returning child maybe. I bet you're wishing for that on you. Probably. But actually the house is a really good scale, isn't it? Because I can see that this... It's a great scale because when we came here, we had three boys who were like 12, 11 and 7, I think. And when we lived in Winchester, our garden was actually a yard, which was probably seven meters by five meters or something, and that was it. And so we moved here, and they've got land, but also in one of the barns I created a sort of sports hall for them. We called it the sports hall, so we set it up.

37:09We put a wooden floor down so they could play hockey indoors in there, and then we built a skate park for them, like with a half pipe. and that was actually a great attraction for all of their mates. So when it was raining, it was skater heaven, basically. That's amazing. So it was good fun. So they've all grown up in it, and, you know, the house was big enough but not too big, so it's intimate. The whole house is actually a very intimate space, so when we've got friends here who either sat around the kitchen table or are all nestled into the sitting room, and it's cosy, yeah. a quick interlude to remind you that you can see a really intimate house tour with max rollett over on patreon max gets very emotional as he shows me all the objects he's been given and the amazing treasures he's unearthed over the years and it's a really touching look at his life behind the scenes so head to patreon.com slash homing with matt to take a look you're a very cool dad max you know that you are though i mean you know what what kid wouldn't want all that kind of setup yeah but that's what they need isn't it that's what they need yeah to just stay with your boys a moment what what amazes me about you and jane is that your your your sons are still it seems to me very very happy to be here to happen they don't live here but they come back a lot don't they hang out with you yeah they like they seem to enjoy your company right yeah that's very aspirational for me and i've got girls that were younger but i love that idea that you can still be a bit of a magnetic presence for them in their lives so how do you how do you explain that i think it's about enabling isn't it i think jane and i are both very sort of um interested in our spirituality and i think that's really important to us so i think there's there's a jane's a feldenkrais practitioner and psychotherapist so there's a lot of there's a lot of awareness about physicality and about one's mental state and being open and we're both um i think we call ourselves buddhists we both do buddhist meditation on a regular I try and do it every day.

39:36Jane does do it every day. I'm always slightly lagging behind. But still, you know, that's really important to us. And I think that's always been there. So I think just bringing that into the, you know, having that in the home is good. I mean, that's come to us latterly, I suppose. When one's consumed with raising children, it's not quite as calm as that. It's a lot more frenetic. But I think, yeah, creating a home and creating warmth has always been really important. Jane's been amazing at that. Yeah. Yeah. So you're sort of describing that they feel, it sounds like you're very open with them and vice versa and they can genuinely be themselves around you.

40:27Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, sometimes it would become a bit sickening for them, the amount of drugs talks we did. I never did any big sex talks, but I was sort of quite pleased about that. There's time. No, it's too late now. But I think it's really, really amazing the way you both, you've told me that you both get up quite early and you go across the road to the studio, don't you? Meditate together as a couple. That's magical, I think. what what do you like how is that important to you and why do you do that well i was thinking about you one of your one of your pointers pre pre this was basically where is your home and i think actually home is basically starts in your you know there's your there's your mind and there's your body yeah and i think your body is really your home and how you set everything else around it is is just maybe it's inspiration for your home that's so interesting it's just about being in yourself isn't it understanding what's going on seeing what's going on letting it be and not sort of trying to wrestle wrestle with it that's not always easy at all but you know it's just basically understanding these things come when they go and we're in transit you know our body is here and then it's gone um no but i feel i feel like just just the meditation and i'm pretty crap at it but basically you know it's a constant learning every day there's a learning and sometimes you sit there and you just think get really frustrated sometimes you just laugh at yourself because of what's going on you know the your thoughts just disappearing into sort of nonsense and sometimes there's a real moments of calm and and and depth yeah and light yeah what else do you do specifically for your well-being in that in that kind of way um i do a bit of yoga yeah so i normally follow the meditation with some yoga um i cycle that's my sort of main form of exercise and i love it um i've always cycled i've cycled you know used to go on holidays as a kid that was basically my freedom i'd go off and we'd go pack everything to our panniers and go around youth hostels basically around scotland wales south of england it was basically complete freedom um and it and you learn independence from like i started when i was 13 and my parents were quite they let me do it you know i don't know that parents would nowadays but you know that's that was part of it so you got to see things and cook and do things that you know be into yeah all that stuff do you cycle on your own or do you go with other people um so i cycle on my own just during the week sometimes there's a club locally that i go with on a sunday but every year i cycle with a friend and we we go on these long adventures so we've cycled to rome but in weekly stages and now we're cycling to lisbon so we've got as far as this we So we cycled to La Rochelle, then the next stage was to Biarritz, and now the next stage is to Santiago, I think.

44:13So you'll have to go out to Biarritz and then go from there to Santiago. I see. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's really great. Yeah. Well, while we're on the cycling, you had an accident, didn't you? I did, yeah. Tell us about that. So that was 2009, I think. um i was basically training for some very adventurous demanding cycle race and i was super fit and i was cycling up the the road here and the lorry that empties our septic tank was following me up the hill in first gear going really really slowly okay anybody wants to hear this but basically i let the lorry pass as it passed i fell over and went on between the front wheel and the back wheel and he he stopped very abruptly thank god but in doing so just crushed my pelvis so uh my heart stopped the air ambulance came they resuscitated me and uh flew me to portsmouth and um i i'm very fortunate no organ damage just structural and i've recovered pretty much yeah i mean that's so that's a near-death experience yeah so so what did that change for you if anything i just think it's just awareness of mortality and and i could have been in a wheelchair from then on I could have you know I used to do hydrotherapy and everybody else in the hydrotherapy pool were men who'd had strokes and I just thought I'm so lucky all I've got is basically structural damage that has been repaired as best they can but I'm not suffering anything like these other people and so i just felt really lucky and also i felt a lot of love from everybody everybody was so supportive and um caring i think long term i think it's just the the trauma's still there somewhere that's not worked out but it's made me feel very sort of precious about life yeah so your your so your more recent um interest in spirituality and so on is that does that come from that time no no it's not related that's always been there so like that's always been there since since i at school i we were forced to go to church every day but actually i didn't see that as a burden and christianity is not my thing but there was certainly an awful lot that i got out of out of the the ritual and the spiritual aspect of it that i i really felt very special and looking back My father had that nature to him as well.

47:24He was very much, there was something very special in his nature that I don't know if it's rubbed off, but that was there and it was present for me. And have you done any other forms of therapy and things like that in recent years? Not in recent years. I did it mainly in my 20s with my mother. well not with my mother about my mother oh did you yeah yeah oh god we all have our mothers that we have to work out especially only children where there's a sort of tight bond was yeah that's so interesting i was going to ask you that really because when whenever i meet an only child they invariably they say that they spent a lot of time with adults growing up and that that was quite formative yeah what what's that like in your case then well actually i think actually made me very quiet i was you know i didn't i always say to people i didn't talk until i was 28 yeah i think i was similar to be said uh yeah i was i was very quiet i i sort of couldn't stand small talk i just thought that was just ridiculous why would you you know have all this chatter it's totally unnecessary if you're going to say something had to be valuable um i can't say i'm like that now so you really fascinatingly talked about uh the human body being a home of sorts which i totally agree with yeah is it your view then that you could actually feel at home anywhere as long as you're you know i'd like to think so matt do you think you would though no no no i don't i don't feel like i'm no not that not that level not that level yeah not many of us are no no no i think that's why you know surround yourself with stuff that reinforces your your your sense of self i think okay yeah well that's interesting so so is that what you feel the objects here do in some way or do you mean the house itself no i think the objects do definitely yeah i'd carry the objects with me okay yeah so if and i like to know they're there okay so if i if the house is burning down i'd go and pick objects over money or not over people yeah hopefully not yeah no no but there's some things that are very special and i just want to want to keep okay well Let's do the burning fire question then.

50:11Okay. Come on, what are you picking? What are you taking? Oh, my God. Okay, Windsor Chair. Okay, the old Windsor Chair. The old Windsor Chair. Yeah. The chest of drawers that my dad gave me when I first started an apprenticeship. It was a pile of sticks, but basically it's a wonderful walnut chest of drawers that I put back together and sort of loved. and then it's going to be stuff that my children have made basically i think yeah yeah pictures that they've drawn um or sculptures that they've made of which there are a lot in here there are but you're very you're very loved aren't you you've got there's this a huge amount of things in here that have been given to you by your family yeah family and friends i think yeah but have that yeah i suppose so yeah yeah i mean i i it probably seems um normal to you but i think actually you know i i i visit a lot of people in a lot of different homes i don't see this level of the this level of uh sort of love exchange if i can put it like that and through objects right i think it's just yeah but then i mean what do you give you what do you give your parents it's really you know if you can create something you know i suppose that's that's the point isn't it that's what i hold valuable i don't you know yeah a piece of clothing is great but it's not got the same as anything personal so i think something personal is always um just so much more touching even if it's just a card that's hand drawn it's so much more touching than any any gift or bought bought thing yeah any bought item yeah yeah and i it's worth saying at this point as well that we we did a walk around of the house beforehand yeah and people should definitely watch that but there is a story behind everything that you have in here yeah it's really touching and really poignant um it's one of the best tours that i've done i have to say that even the secret Santa's that you get given are handmade at Christmas, right, by your employees and stuff.

52:29Yeah, poor employees. So, yeah, but as you say, it means a lot to you. Yeah. And people know that it means a lot to you, so I guess that's why they do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very, very touching. So do you think that if we moved you somewhere else, but we took some of those important objects with you, you would feel at home? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think, yeah. I think it wouldn't take much. How far are you transporting me? Well, even into that, yeah, well, that's a good question. Yeah. But I suppose... You're not taking me to the new forest, are you? That might be a step too far. All those ponies.

53:12I mean, I guess I'm trying to get to the bottom of the extent to which the architecture of the thing is important or whether it's all the layers inside. And I think you're saying it's all the stuff inside. It's the stuff inside, yes, that makes a home. Yeah. There's a psychotherapist called Michael Ballant, or there was. Yeah. I've been writing about this recently for my book. And he wrote a book called Thrills and Regression, okay, in 1959. And he came up with two words, all right? One's ochnophil and the other one is philobat. Okay, so the Ochnophil, he reckons, gets comfort from being around physical objects or people.

53:57They generally prefer sort of quite familiar experiences to very thrill-seeking ones. And they don't always like being alone that much. They like being surrounded by things, people. And then the Phylobat conversely prefers not to attach to people and things very much. Is that a six-legged animal? That's a sick figured animal. Yeah, so this is not you. They really like thrill-seeking stuff, so you might find them doing skiing and high-wire acts and stuff like that. And they can be a bit emotionally absent sometimes. Yeah. You can see where I'm going with this, I think. But it seems to me that you are someone, more than most people I know, who really needs those objects around them.

54:46who starts tearing up when i start talking about them well yeah but this is it yeah i don't know i'd like to think that i could live without them i could i'm sure i could live without them for a while but i think i'd soon sort of acquire other stuff that would replace it yeah yeah i think it's it's just the it's the story that's associated with the item as as much as the item in itself although the items i suppose that i choose to display are i consider beautiful yeah yeah Yeah. So I find it so interesting. I mean, with your collecting, can you describe what you're looking for or what it is that you see?

55:25Because there's a whole massive range of different things in here. But if I could ask you to find a thread that runs through everything, what would it be? I'm touched by the story, basically. That's what it comes down to is the story of whether it's – I'm looking at there's a bit of carving that's on that over mantle there and you can just see that that's that's obviously the hand of somebody it's done in about 1700 and and just like the skill involved in it is amazing and it's a fragment and nobody will probably notice it but to me it's there's it's just that point of discovery where you find something and you're just like that's that's amazing and so that's something that's not done by me and then you get something like this hold on so this is the thing i always pull out sorry this is it so this is this is this is max's story in one piece here okay so it's a cutlery tray it's a cutlery tray okay and it's got it's got different animals down the carved down the side yeah and it's got keep your steel always bright on that end okay what carved into it yeah yeah So that could apply to your knife or it could apply to a woodworker.

57:04I see. Yeah. And here, what does it say? Where there's a will, there's a way. Okay. Well, where there's a may, there's a way as well, you see. It's going back to that early. It's going back to that. So this is made by, it turns out it's stamped on the bottom, which is really rare but it turns out that it's it's carved by a lamp lighter he was a wood carver but also a lamp lighter in bristol so obviously he would be wood whittling during the day and lighting the lamps at night and i bought this from uh at olympia antiques fair from robert hirshorn who was a fantastic dealer in sort of folk folk art and wonderful oak furniture and I just cried when I bought it because of the association with Kevin and just this whole feeling of that being my story.

58:03So my grandfather was a woodcarver. I forgot to mention that bit. Okay. Yeah. So you looked at this object and you thought that is in some way autobiographical or it represents a part of my life. Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah. even though no one you know had anything to do with making it or owning it or giving it or anything no yeah exactly that that yeah because that's that's another thing entirely isn't it i mean when if someone that you know and love like a son gives you something that they've made yeah yeah it's a very very clear emotional transaction exactly yeah but that this is something very different to that which is something that you've bought yeah but it's still does it mean does it I mean if it's a different meaning different emotion different emotion but there's something about how it's sort of the sort of natural beauty of it the sort of the writing on both ends and and the sort of the sort of naivety of it as well which is which is charming love that yeah there we are

59:21how do you know max if it's not hoarding how do you know well what's the line between collecting and hoarding i don't need to hoard i've got i basically i can sell you know i basically sell anything that i don't and there's very little stuff that actually makes it from over the road to here yeah so over the road is where my store is and that is basically stuff that i really love but I don't need any of it there's very little that actually comes over into the house now you know I have everything that I need I might replace a cushion or no I don't need I don't there's nothing that's that's needed and most of what I feel like I own is actually there's very little furniture in here.

1:00:12It's mainly objects that have a story behind them. I think the only thing I have collected are Delft Plates. When I did a podcast with Beth and Laura Wood, she said, well, she likened objects to sound, which I thought was really interesting. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I really like that. And she talked about how, so she's got a show at the Design Museum and that meant she had to take some of the things out of her flat and give them to the show. And she said that that made her space a bit too noisy and so she had to find the right things to fill those spaces again. And I was reflecting on that and I was thinking about how actually john cage of course made the whole thing about how empty spaces have a resonance or a sound or a noise to them so actually we're living with things all the time which reverberate in some way yeah do you identify with that yeah yeah i think it's it's all it's all color isn't it to me it's all color so but colors of but do you say color isn't like a visual thing or do you say do you think it also has a sort of frequency like a sonic frequency as well uh yeah yeah it's a texture it's a you know and yes it's a texture so we're building the layers and layers and layers going through house and and and different portals to look through how do you know if this place is not too noisy like how do you stop it getting too noisy i mean what's too much?

1:02:03You know, clearly if you had like piles of rubbish in the corner and flies everywhere, that would be too much. That would be, you'd gone too far. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But as a collector of things, which you are, and someone who loves objects, how do you know where to set that frequency or set that line? Well, that's when I tidy up for you when you come round. That's so touching. Okay, so this is pared back. No, but basically I like things. I don't mind clutter, but I don't like dust. And what's dust? Dust is just not literally dust. I mean stuff that is impairing your vision, which may sound a bit odd, but it's easy to just let things lie or let things scatter about.