Patrick Williams on Grief, Restoration and the House That Shaped His Life

36:15And if you win, you win a Lamborghini or Ferrari or whatever. Yeah. And that was amazing because when I joined that company, there were four or five people in the head office. and by the time I left two or three years later it had floated on the AIM stock market so I witnessed the growth of a small business which was a really useful thing to kind of get under my belt so that enabled me to buy my first project which was a kind of shell in Brixton that I would come home from work you know, and tear down a full ceiling in the evening and spent the whole weekend, you know, working on that place, you know, doing all the work myself.

37:07And I just, after a few months of doing that, I thought, hang on a minute, I'm enjoying this so much that this is what I need to be doing uh as a career okay then luckily i i i got my first job doing an interior um slash refurbishment work for a client and and back then i was i was doing a combination of the design and the actual physical work okay so i did you know an awful lot of painting and decorating and that thing um and then gradually um the sort of practical side of things went and it was just designing and project managing and and that's when bedlap was was born 20 years ago last year is it wow i didn't realize it was as long as that yeah how amazing okay well that brings us on to

38:01Patrick Williams:this place then um so let's talk about here so what brought you here and why this building and And what was it like when you got here? The reason we came to Bath was because of the architecture. We didn't know a soul in Bath. We actually, the bed and breakfast dream was what initially brought us to Bath. We were quite keen on this idea of restoring a beautiful old building in the middle of nowhere, but somewhere near Bath, because the countryside around here is so beautiful. And it's a landscape that really reminded me of Gascony. It's a very similar kind of layout and hills and so on. And so we kept coming to Bath to look for the right building and ended up falling in love with Bath itself.

38:52And it was actually when Neri was, I think, in the process of giving birth to our first daughter that I said,

39:01Patrick Williams:I think I found the place. which might not have been the best timing uh but anyway when our eldest was three months old we moved to bath and we we tackled this very beautiful um georgian townhouse which became the bed and breakfast and it was the first time it had changed hands since 1809 and like all buildings that have had very little done to them you know it just been rented out to people year after year and it had never suffered um as a result of fashion so all of the original paneling was all there and you know it was in a pretty shocking state but its poverty had sort of kept it alive um and so we restored that building um and ran that as a bed and breakfast and the guests would only had two bedrooms down in the basement and the guests would come upstairs for their breakfast around our kitchen table and neri used to offer um full english but also a full Turkish breakfast.

40:16Patrick Williams:Oh, cool. Which was really good. It was, you know, kind of 12 different little dishes and she won an award for it. And people would sit there and eat their breakfast and go, oh, oh, I like this coffee cup. Where do you get them? I like that pendant light. Where's that from? The bed linen was so soft. Where do you get it from? And it just got us thinking okay you know i'd always had this dream as a child of of running a shop and at berdelat there was a a tree outside where i would you know if you if you dug down into the field by about a foot you'd reach clay of suitable quality to then make something and my dad would fire it in the um in the barbecue overnight and i used to sell these little pots in what i called my pottery shop when I was five or six.

41:11So it was definitely there from childhood, this idea of keeping shop. And I suppose when people started to show an interest in our homewares that we were using at the B &B, we kind of thought, OK, maybe this could work quite well. Maybe we need to start selling the things that we're actually using ourselves. And this building, we'd walked past it hundreds of times walked inside it and just thought wow what a stunner even if it in its decrepit state and it was one of those kind of what if places um and it came on the market and we had to um fight very very hard to to get the place you know there were lots of people interested and i think probably the majority of people wanted to kind of turn it into a pizza express or whatever um and luckily you know i think they probably did um pre-apps with the council and the council said thou shalt not yeah because it's such a special you know retail space um so yeah we were lucky enough to to get this place and moved here nine years ago and then it It was a kind of four and a half year restoration project.

42:29And we launched the shop just as COVID was subsiding and people could go out again. And it's been a really, it's served us so well as a building.

42:42Patrick Williams:Forgive the brief interruption. We recorded a house tour to go with this episode. And it's one of my absolute favorites. So if you're looking for some design inspiration, Patrick is a master of classical detailing. but he's also a great storyteller and it's full of emotional anecdotes as well so head over to patreon.com slash homing with matt to take a look you're obviously a classicist is that fair to say yeah you're drawn to regency georgian architecture clearly yeah talk me through that why why is what is it about a classical building that holds the body in a certain way or you know how does it relate to you as a human being as it were i mean in in so many ways which is why it's it just kind of chimes with me um i suppose the most significant way is physically you know the way in which classical architecture with all of its kind of correct proportions they they follow the golden ratio and so on and so forth which ultimately relate to the human body and i think that's why when you see a beautiful georgian facade with its perfect perfectly proportioned sash window containing this grid of perfectly proportioned window panes you it feels perfect because it ultimately relates to the proportions in our in our body and then when you go into the building you know that visual experience um there's almost another dimension to that feeling as you experience the proportion of the room and you kind of it's it's about spatial proportion um but then there are all sorts of other reasons why i think it it works so well you know one is the way in which very often classical architecture will celebrate local materials and in so doing the buildings are kind of rooted in their place which you see here in Bath I mean everything is in Bathstone and um but the way in which the various different orders of classical architecture can can kind of speak to that idea of place and belonging through materials and also the idea of identity you know certain orders are associated with different types of people or or place really interesting um you kindly showed me around earlier on and we filmed it and we'll make that available to patreon subscribers as always but the the screen that you're sitting in front of you were telling me about just tell us about this detail here because people are going to be able to watch this on YouTube.

45:33So this detail here, I call the Adidas stripe. And that's just terminology I use when I'm speaking to the guys in the workshop, trying to describe the type of door that we're using, but because it's got these kind of three flush reeds running along it. And it's just a really nice detail. I'm trying to remember where I first met it but it's a detail I met I think on a similar sort of you know 1850s screen and it's you know runs along the central rail where it meets this this vertical style as it's known is is called a gunstock style where it tapers here so it's chunky at the bottom giving giving the requisite strength but then at the top to maximize the glazed area and maximize the amount of light that comes in it sort of tapers and this forms the shape of of a kind of rifle you know gunstock um so we use that detail quite a lot and i love the way the adidas stripe gets this kind of cadillac-esque fin where it meets the gunstock style fantastic just to combine lots of random

46:49Patrick Williams:brands yeah um i as you know i have co-founded a business called inigo and another one called the modern house and inigo i suppose is reflective of all the things you talked about and i agree with which is the way that classical proportions feel right somehow i grew up in a georgian building so I experienced it firsthand the quality of light the proportions of spaces and so on I you know there's nothing better um but also with my with my kind of modern architecture hat on I also think well how if we try to keep recreating what's happened previously how does our generation learn to progress how do we move things on what do you think about that Maybe we don't need to move things on, but what's your view on that?

47:45I mean, do you think we should be eating powdered food like astronauts? I mean, if you think of a Lancashire hot pot, you know, why are we still eating a Lancashire hot pot if it's something that was eaten 200 years ago? When I think of traditional buildings, not necessarily classical buildings, but traditional buildings that are made using traditional materials with traditional building methods. I think the reason they're so successful for me is because of this idea of sensory engagement. You know, there's a sensory landscape in these buildings, whether it's the visual aspect, whether it's, you know, the way in which the acoustic of a space or the sound of your footsteps on hollow floorboards or the creak of a floorboard, the sound of a door closing into its frame, all of those sorts of things in a traditionally built building, I think are so much more obvious.

48:54And they're things that we really engage with in a kind of bodily way. And I think, you know, for example, on the visual side of things my daughter once said when she was tiny i'd fed her these um bird's eye potato waffles and when she finished she said um those sash windows were delicious oh and i was so i was so incredibly proud of course um because i thought what a wonderful connection that she's made you And of course, she'd grown up in Bath and that's the only window type she knew probably. But it got me thinking about this idea of visual diet and how important those sorts of things are, you know, that when you are enjoying proportion that relates to the human form, it feels right.

49:49and I think with an awful lot of modern buildings that proportion for me it doesn't quite work and so I don't feel so comfortable in those spaces because the proportions aren't quite right but also the materials are often you know quite hard and therefore don't feel I don't feel as a human being like they relate to me in the same way. I feel like successful buildings should be thought about almost as extensions of ourselves as living organisms. So they should swell and shrink, you know, and move with the seasons. They should, surfaces should be allowed to acquire beautiful patina. over time. I think it's beautiful when a ceiling undulates or where floorboards start to cup and you get that lovely kind of landscape across the surface of the floor.

51:01And again, I feel like a lot of modern buildings, those kind of sensations are lost. And they're fighting, they're fighting against nature, you know. and because they're not built from lime they crack and they deteriorate and they don't they can't kind of you know in the way in which when you meet an old person and they've got a fantastically wrinkled face and they've got gray hair and that's all such a lovely part of their identity, you know, and it tells their story. And I feel like modernism is, as a language, it's still in its infancy compared to, you know, traditional architecture. And I think, you know, it still hasn't quite overcome this idea of having to live, A, with humans who scuff things and B, with nature where, you know, they need to be able to kind of move and adapt to their surroundings.

52:06Patrick Williams:Yeah, it's interesting. I just don't think they're compatible. So I agree with the points that you're making, but what I would say is I do think that the better modern buildings are able to provide that if they are materially set up in the right way so that, to your point, they can take that where. Yeah, exactly. I think the problem is that, you know, for example, John Pawson, who I've spoken to on the podcast previously, is clearly the master of... He's one of my big heroes. Yeah, mine too. And he knows that, I've told him that. But there's such a purity to the line, to the planes of his architecture, that they become about...

52:54Patrick Williams:They really become about light. They're just about light, I think. To the extent that he doesn't put anything on the walls because it compromises that purity somehow. I think the problem we have is that because that's had so many imitators. Exactly. We think about, you know, property developers who do that kind of look badly, where it's basically mean little boxes painted white. Exactly. With no soul. That's where I think modern architecture comes unstuck and can get a bad name, I think. But to pick up on what you're saying about the sensory aspect, if you think about this home of yours, what do you think of in terms of the kind of sounds and the smells and the multi-sensory experiences of being here?

53:40I think, you know, this is a very open plan space, both horizontally and vertically. And I really love being in the bath and smelling the roast chicken, you know. So from a kind of, from that perspective of enjoying the kind of smell of a building, I love the way in which smells can kind of waft around the place. I love all the kind of creaks of the floorboards. You know, I love how when you're in one part of the building, you can sort of hear what's going on in the other part of the building. You know, you're really kind of connected through the kind of sound landscape. It's very alive, this building, you know, that idea of it being a kind of living thing.

54:29It's alive and well, and it has a loud voice. and you know the shop is is part and parcel of of this building and um I really feel like when we when we carried out the restoration we spent so much time worrying about getting the details right when it came to the restoration of the fabric you know using the right timber and getting the right bead detail on there and so on and so forth but actually what we ended up doing inadvertently was to to not just restore the fabric but restore the spirit of the place as well and when that shop is full of people you know when the local community come in and shop or chat to us you can you can sense the building loving their company it loves to host people which is such a nice thing to kind of you know I feel very proud about having restored that element

55:42Patrick Williams:yeah love that we were looking earlier at your your door to the shop there and it's got the scratch marks from your dog pouring at the door and um that is a very powerful I think visual manifestation of this multi-sensory thing you're talking about if I think about my own home that sound of the dog scratching the door that's a really that's quite a big part of my my day there or the sound of the children upstairs and the the floorboards creaking as they move around or you know the sound of curtains opening in the morning or shutters being folded back yeah but the other thing i want you said earlier that i wanted to pick you up on was was this idea of a visual diet which i i really yeah it resonates with me a lot that my wife faye talks a lot about you know with our children really exposing them to as much beauty as we possibly can because it's important and it all goes in and it's all layered inside someone's brain somehow especially in you know what they're consuming through popular culture you know what kind of films are they watching what kind of places are they visiting living in a place like bath what are they taking in architecturally every day what else do you think about in that sense just through being a father you know do you do that in quite a conscious way yes i suppose to a degree i do i'm something as a father that i think works really well as a sort of reset button is is just going out in nature and you know the children will argue and will be bored and will insist on you know watching telly and all that sort of thing and when you suggest oh let's take the dog out for a walk it's the last thing they want to do uh and you you know you struggle and you argue and eventually they get in the car and then you drive to a nearby um you know beautiful part of the countryside and the moment they get out of the car, any kind of mood they were in vanishes and they're in nature and they're playing.

57:51And very often, you know, even if they're a teenager, they're still kind of engaging in play in a much more juvenile way, which I think is so healthy. You know, climbing trees and swinging across rivers and all that sort of thing. So I think there's such value in that. as a kind of device just to kind of reset and connect back. Agreed. Particularly in this kind of screen-hungry world. Yeah, agreed.

58:24Patrick Williams:So you've got two girls, age 13 and 10, is it? Yes. What kind of father do you think you are out of interest? And do you think you're quite similar to your own dad? In some ways, yes. I kind of catch myself sometimes, you know, sounding just like him. I think, you know, it probably doesn't help this thing of kind of being in the same building as the shop, but also my studio at the other end of the building. So, you know, home is sandwiched between these two kind of work things. And I run my own practice. um so you know inevitably work is is there the whole time and i think sometimes it's there too much which is is detrimental for that that relationship um people you know say to me oh but what your children have witnessed is how you've grown this business and and how you you know design something one day and then there it is in front of them having been built the next day and how wonderful that they get to witness that which is which is probably true um but i do wonder sometimes whether whether i've got the balance right on that front but i also think maybe it's a bit selfish but um i feel like i kind of rely on the children to um to take me out of that workplace and focus in on something you know more meaningful and I'm I'm really grateful to them for for doing that you know they're they're a useful kind of way of changing gear yeah exactly because we all experience that thing and so many of us work from home to at least some degree now don't we I mean you you know you're quite an extreme example of that and that you're you know you've got a work sandwich do you find yourself sitting at this table eating together but your mind is somewhere else because you're still in that work zone and how do you make that transition between the two that you know i feel like we kind of need to have a deliberate transition almost like taking the hat off yes taking the hat off or the the commute you know i'm jealous of people that sort of you know even if it's just a kind of five minute walk from one from you know even if you're at the bottom of the garden you walk into your home and you're in a different zone mentally yeah as well as physically so yeah I do I do struggle to kind of separate the two I mean I think I try and use the day um I try and use time to to separate the two so I'm an early bird I kind of start work at five in the morning oh really and what that does is it enables me to focus really, really hard for a couple of hours before the rest of the family wake up.

1:01:22And I get more done in those two hours than four or five hours during the rest of the day. So that's my kind of special moment where, particularly if it's a demanding thing, like a, you know, a VAT return, or a really annoying kind of wiring diagram for a building or whatever, something that kind of demands a lot of focus. And so I find if I've had a successful morning by 7am, I'm able to relax into the day because I feel like I've achieved something already. And through that, you know, relaxation, I'm then probably a little bit more patient with children getting ready for school and all those sorts of frantic moments.

1:02:10Yeah.

1:02:11Patrick Williams:As you were talking, I was wondering about, you know, could you even at the end of your working day go out of the shop, lock it up and then, you know, walk around the block to the back of the building and come through that way? Even that could be a bit of a reset. That might be quite a good, I might try that. That reminds me of what the Danish do on New Year's Eve. They go out the front door and then in through the back door, but in a sort of dancing choo-choo train, which we did here once. with some danish friends but yeah i might try that yeah you should i i know that you're interested in the link between the home and the body and the mind well-being tell me about that how how do we how do we consider spaces so that they support the well-being support the nervous system as we were saying you know proportion is a big one but also um using the right materials so So, you know, the way in which a room, you know, the acoustic quality of a space, I think, is very important to how we feel.

1:03:19I mean, you know, the sound of this glass going onto an oak table, if you imagine the equivalent, if it was going onto marble. Yeah. If I put a glass down on a bit of stone, it makes me feel uneasy, you know, physically and mentally. so there's those sort of more nuanced things to do with materials um if you think of a modern plastered wall okay you've got this kind of plasterers are taught to kind of do this perfect mirror finish that's what's encouraged right the flat mirror perfection now the difference when it comes to the play of light across that surface or even how sound bounces off that surface is very different to a lathen plastered wall for example which has this kind of movement to it that feels a lot more a lot gentler and then if you think about the corner of that modern plastered wall you know which has invariably a metal angle bead you know with its fin that you you bring your trowel up to so you've got this very very perfect line this very crisp line and those lines they they tend to kind of go around let's say a window reveal so whether it's a doorway or a window reveal that these are things that you kind of pass through you might lean and look out the window you might pass through an aperture in a wall to go to another room and i feel that you know when you're passing through i mean before you've even passed through it physically you've mentally you've gone through that window to look at the view outside and if that's continually kind of framed in this harsh sharp um line that for me that also makes me feel really uneasy and i love the traditional way of you know you know, doing a corner where you'd have a timber dowel, you know, serving as a bead and the plaster either kind of wraps over it.

1:05:36And then, yes, there's a there's a crack where the two materials shift, but that's sort of celebrated. Or you have that lovely quirked detail where, you know, the plaster is kind of tucked in at 45 degrees and then you see the timber. And that is something that looks beautiful. It looks soft to the eye. But also as you physically, as you pass by it it's a nice thing to kind of brush up against you know it's not sharp and harsh so i think it's all these little details that um can help make you feel at ease you know the use of uh natural materials and and these kind of more traditional approaches to to building techniques that really really help definitely i agree with that are there any

1:06:28Patrick Williams:spaces that you can think of that make you feel the opposite to that that you come across in everyday life well i mean this whole thing of you know whether modernism is is a success or not and and where it should be used and and not i do feel um with public spaces like airports or or art galleries even um i think there's definitely a place for the more modernist clean and and minimal approach there because you know i hate to agree with le corbusier but this whole idea of he said you know we should think about buildings as machines for living in um i i disagree with that when it comes to domestic architecture because of what we've just been talking about i just i just don't think human beings and modernism are compatible in the home.

1:07:26And this is just my opinion. I know there'll be hundreds of people out there, you know, disagreeing with me, which is, which is great. But I think, you know, if you think of an airport, you know, its primary function is to get hundreds and hundreds of people every second passing through this building. They need to, they need to do various things like drop off their luggage check in sit and wait buy a sandwich board the aircraft it's a it's a it's a functional building that's its primary concern and i think modernism works really really well for that because it's not you don't really want to hang out in an airport you just want to get your plane um and i think with an art museum you know i think it's great if the building can you know it needs to kind of play second fiddle to the the artwork that's on display so it needs to be neutral enough to frame what's being exhibited so i think it works there as well but when it comes to a home i just i i can't i don't feel comfortable in a building that's kind of sharp and you know doesn't feel particularly human it's interesting as you're

1:08:41Patrick Williams:talking I was thinking so I'm finishing off my latest book at the moment which is called homing and I one of the things I've been writing about is exactly that actually which is how does certain public spaces make us feel and I was thinking about a recent trip to New York and I went to MoMA and I also went to the Guggenheim and I was struck by what a joyful humane experience it was to visit the Guggenheim because it takes you on this promenade up through the building along a ramp and what I love about that experience is that you are always aware of exactly where you are in the building because the eye can find its point wherever you are um there's always a means of escape because if you want to you can just turn around and trundle back down again or roly poli down to the bottom if you want yeah whereas i think there are spaces like moma or or tate modern or many other art galleries that are they they do feel so inhumane they are very rectangular there's shadow gaps there's there's nothing to entertain the eye and also there's no means of escape so when you're in the middle of most art galleries in a kind of central gallery space you haven't got actually haven't got a clue how to find your way you haven't mapped it in your brain it's like ikea it's like ikea which is the worst of all yeah you're you're you're stuck in some horrendous holding pattern and and in the new york moment it's very like an airport yeah you You know, particularly because it's rammed full of people the whole time as well.

1:10:23You know, I love the Guggenheim.

1:10:26Patrick Williams:Yeah. I love the ramp. And I actually love how low the wall is. Yeah. So you sort of, you feel there's a real kind of energy there as you look over, you know. It's interesting that the building has clearly moved a lot over time. and the walls must be repainted frequently. But there ain't no repainting the concrete floor. And so you look down over this nice low wall, you look down at the floor that is full of cracks. And I love those cracks because they're honest, but, you know, clearly weren't intentional. Sure. So there's an example of the kind of the original design concept failing because of an incompatibility with nature yeah i hear you and it puts me in mind as well getting back to the tate of course that brilliant um was it doris salcedo who did that amazing crack through the concrete floor in the turbine turbine hall right which you can still see remnants of right and so that's a lovely thing because they filled it in but you can still see where the sort of ghost of it the ghost of it and actually that's what a lot of this comes back to we were talking earlier about leaving traces but as human beings we we are physical and we leave traces behind don't we of ourselves yeah and i think that's what you can feel certainly in this building yeah very much so and you know i i feel i people use this expression the whole time but i really do feel honored to to be part of this building's trajectory and to be a layer yeah i love that I want to mention you've written a really lovely book about your life, but it's also about your approach to interiors.

1:12:21Patrick Williams:It's a picture book, but what I love about it as well is it's got lots of autobiography in there as well. So you've made that link between the personal and the architectural, which I always like. So I'd really encourage people to have a look at that. um but i think i'd like to just finish by just sort of taking you back to berdalat again as this very formative place from your childhood how do you look back on it now i mean have you been back there and do you have an urge to go back there i like to avoid going back there so my My parents sold the place, I'm trying to think now, you know, quite a while ago.

1:13:06It was when I was kind of in the midst of, you know, setting up my own life as an adult. And I think I was so preoccupied with how exciting the world was, you know, post uni, that at the time I didn't think, oh, what a shame, you know, my family home is going. um but actually i'm quite grateful that that happened and that it's sort of preserved in my memory as this perfect place and sadly that it was it was bought by um by a couple who ended up i think sort of renting it out as a holiday let and so you know immediately kind of didn't get the love that it had been used to and so I'm loathe to go back there and and see it in in an altered state and I like to just sort of keep it in my in my mind and like I said the the region is still home you know the landscape is still home and all of those things that I associate with that place still give me that sensation of of being there.

1:14:16Patrick Williams:So you were telling me that your father passed away a few years ago I'm sorry to hear about that um what was that time like for you because he's obviously a very special character for you I mean that's clear he taught you a huge amount um how how do you how do you look back on that now and do you have things here that remind you of him a lot yeah I mean pretty much everything remind reminds me of him and and this book is It's really, it's just a huge tribute to my dad and to my mum.

1:14:53And it was really lovely, the whole process of writing the book and, you know, researching the book, because I had to do an awful lot of researching myself, if that makes sense. And it was so lovely to kind of delve back into my childhood and realise how the impact that my parents both had on me as an individual, but particularly as a designer. And, you know, my dad would sort of, while supper was coming together, you know, in the sort of closing stages of my mum's, of my mum cooking supper, he would always, you know, take hold of my hand. with his glass of wine in the other hand and we'd sort of go off on a little tour to the next door room and he'd just point out little things, whether it was the hands on a clock or the way the lime render would sort of pillow and tuck in where it met the lintel of a doorway.

1:16:04He was so good at kind of pointing out little details that all went in when I was a kid. And, you know, they're all the things that I, you know, I've sort of built a career, I think, through, you know, understanding how to sort of read a building and then how to build a relationship with it and then do things to it that are right for it. And the title of my book is The House Rules, which is it reflects our mantra as a as a practice which is that the the building is the client the building is the boss and should dictate everything that's done to it and that all comes from my parents approach to the way in which they restored bed and that it's all kind of

1:16:58Patrick Williams:stems from that really and in your study you have a bust of a man looking over your shoulder as you're working and you were telling me that you it's not your father but it looks uncannily like your father yeah and so that bust my wife and I were it was actually when my dad was was in hospital and you know the final kind of fortnight before he died and we we were at the Bath Decorative Antiques Fair um and saw this this bust and thought gosh that looks so like him and so had to buy it and of course now it's it's him you know um despite the fact it was not originally of him, but it's become him.

1:17:51And so that sort of, when I'm sat at my desk, he's on a, on a sort of column stand just here. And then on the chimney breast, I've, I've moved it since, but there, there was this portrait of my great grandmother on my mum's side. And, you know, I think she's particularly beautiful. And she really reminds me of my mum. And so I suddenly realised, actually, I think it was when I was listening to your conversation with Nigel Slater,

1:18:31that unconsciously, I'd sort of placed myself between my two parents, you know, there was my mum on the wall in the form of this painting and there was my dad here in the form of this bust and so they they're both sort of looking over me on a day-to-day basis which is really nice realization and I think it was listening to your podcast you were talking about something similar to that this idea of unconsciously sort of or maybe consciously using portraits of other people to actually represent your ancestors and i think nigel had sort of bought a couple of paintings that became his parents right it's so interesting isn't it i mean my own father died a few years

1:19:15Patrick Williams:ago as well i've talked about that on the podcast before and i think that this doesn't get talked about enough but actually as as a as a man losing your father

1:19:29Patrick Williams:aside from the emotion of it it's also i don't know if you feel this but i i feel there's a kind of also a weight of responsibility somehow that gets passed across it's like you're now the you're now the village elder somehow i know that sounds quite reductive but there is something in that i think did you feel that yeah i wonder if that depends on um whether there's a surviving parent you know whether because my mum died first yeah and I think what happened when my father died was that actually um I sort of mourned my mum all over again you know it sort of brought that all back you know a few years later so I sort of grieved them as one unit if that makes sense and, you know, I was suddenly an orphan.

1:20:22And that was a funny feeling because, particularly because my parents have always been real kind of hero figures for me. I think to suddenly exist in a world where they're not there at the end of the phone or, you know, physically, you know, I felt quite lost. and again you know putting together this book has really helped me sort of come to terms with that and sort of you know um that it's been an important part of the grieving process and when my mum died I I poured everything into a creative project as well which was to make a film that was shown at her funeral and it was a film all about her life and so I got in touch with everyone that she'd known from childhood right the way through and ask them to sort of contribute, you know, just on an iPhone, just to record little messages of memories, which I then put on top of photographs and video footage and that sort of thing.

1:21:36So again, I think for me, that along with, I also created a book. um my my mum was an amazing artist she never sold her work or exhibited her work in her lifetime but she would give it to um members of the family and she was prolific she she made an awful lot of paintings and sculptures and ceramics and that sort of thing so when she died I got in touch with everyone that I knew had some of her work and asked them to document it. And I compiled it into a book and the book ended up, you know, that thick. So again, that was a way I think, I think my way of dealing with loss is to sort of create.

1:22:22So it was about making a film, making a book about my mum and then making this book about me and my relationship with both of them. and it was it was really useful yeah i love that that makes a lot of sense

1:22:36Patrick Williams:also it strikes me maybe that are you a family and and an individual who who who puts a lot of stock by this idea that an object can hold memory uh yeah very much so um I when I cleared out my parents home in Spain I was amazed by the fact that when the contents of the home were packed up in boxes it was no longer their home I think you'd imagine that the that the building carries this kind of spirit and to a degree I think it does I think place holds the memory of people but actually I think that objects you know whether it's books or furniture or little random little things I think they are what make someone's home their home if that makes sense and I think I think as we go through life, our interiors are a bit like nets and they sort of, they let unimportant things pass through, but the really vital things, the things that end up being descriptive of that life remain.

1:23:56And they are a form of portraiture, of self-portraiture. And I love the way in which when you inherit pieces of furniture, you know, you then they relate to the person that you've inherited them from and they carry memory with them and i think that's really beautiful so there's lots of things in this home that kind of link back to

1:24:20Patrick Williams:um to to people that have passed away yeah final question given everything we've talked about today how do you summarize the meaning of your home and the position that it has in your life as an individual for me being at home is a kind of safe environment and i think that feeling of safety comes from being really familiar with everything not just which books are on the shelf and in in what order and things like that but you know the sound of the sash window descending or the sound of the the bells on a monday because that's when they practice at the abbey and little things like that and that that sense of security i think is what i value most about about home and it's it's a place where you can just be yourself and you feel safe yeah thanks so much patrick thank you it's been such a pleasure

1:25:35Patrick Williams:thanks very much for listening everyone i hope you enjoyed that i certainly love spending the morning with patrick he and i have children of a similar age and he sent me home laden with gifts very kindly including some raw indigo pigment to give to my eldest daughter whose name is indigo so that was really kind of him as you probably gathered patrick's house is a total knockout if you want to take a look inside you can watch my home tour of course on patreon he tells me some really emotional stories about some of the objects in the house and also about a particular space that he's created in honor of his mother that brought a lump to my throat i must say so the web address for that is patreon.com slash homing with matt as we mentioned in the conversation patrick has a book out called the house rules which is well worth a look.

1:26:27Patrick Williams:It's full of beautiful images, but it's also a really interesting story as well, I think. If you enjoyed this podcast and can smear a second to leave us a review, we'd be most grateful for that. There's another great guest coming up next week, so if you haven't already subscribed to the show, please do tap on the follow button and it will appear in your feed as soon as it gets released. This episode was produced by Podshop with music by Simeon Walker. Thanks all and talk to you next time. Bye for now.