Design Historians, Authors & Curators: Charlotte & Peter Fiell – Collecting, Watches, Taschen & Why Everything Is Designed

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1:07The Gstaad Guy:I'm so excited to be in this very colorful room in a very gray city. So it's great to be here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the Tashin stores are super special. Yeah. And the London one here, we love. That's amazing. Every corner you look at, there's just so much to take in. Yeah. It's really amazing. No doubt. Around the World with your host, the Stad Guy. We welcome you back to the Stad Guy podcast, sharing stories of excellence with those in the know for those who just know. Well, Charlotte and Peter Fiel, really happy to have you both here. Thank you. I think you're both exceptional storytellers, both on mic, which the audience will discover today, but also in your chosen form of storytelling, which is these beautiful books.

1:58The Gstaad Guy:I would love to know more about how this became your way of telling stories with these incredible books that are incredibly visual as well. Charlotte, I'd love to start with you. It really goes back to my childhood. My paternal grandparents, my grandfather was a collector of Chinese ceramics Japanese sword furniture, netsuki, whatever so from a very early age I mean literally as a baby teething I was given like a little Chinese bronze because it was cold to teethe on so that had all, you know the sort of collecting thing had been but also my grandparents for every birthday and every Christmas would give me a beautiful storybook that was beautifully bound.

2:55It was just like, you know, they were sort of folio society books, or they'd even give me old ones. And I just loved those books. I loved the storytelling, and I loved the physicality of books. So in a way, I sort of, I fell in love with books as a child. and there was a huge reader as a child. I mean, I learned so much. At a very young age, I was horribly precocious with what I was reading, you know, from existential stuff to feminism to whatever, way too young.

3:32But somehow we fell into doing books. I was at Sotheby's and my tutor said, you know, you really should write a book on what you're specializing on, which was mid-century modern, because there was really no book out there. And so that's what happened. And we never really looked back. Well, you need to contextualize it a bit more by saying, not very far away from here, just on the other side of Chelsea Town Hall, we had a gallery where we were selling pioneering upmarket mid-century modern furniture. We broke it, basically, in the UK. We had a furniture gallery. And this is what your tutor at Sotheby's was saying, is that we needed to write a book about it to tell the story about mid-century modern, why it was so important.

4:23We actually wanted a catalog, but the catalog, it was too expensive for us to make a catalog. So it was like, oh, well, let's do a book and then someone else can basically pay for it. I remember. I can remember the day vividly Charlotte came home from Sotheby's and said, my tutor has just said, look, we need to write a book. And we thought, wow, okay, well, who should we go to? Well, the best publisher we knew at the time was Thames & Hudson, who were based in London, fortunately. So we contacted them, went in, made a pitch, and by gum, they went for it, first shot, like, whoa, full-on book with Thames & Hudson, our first attempt.

5:02And I was only, what, 23? Yeah. So to have your first book at 23 is quite something. We were running a gallery, writing a book, and Charlotte had her first baby. And I've got this fabulous photograph of Charlotte nursing a baby in front of the first ever Mac computer, okay, writing this book. You know, in our living room, we didn't live very far from here either, just the other side of Sloan Square. But the story goes, I mean, the book did extremely well, so happy to say. and there was a German co-edition which was noticed by Benedict Aschen. And we didn't know who he was, but we got this phone call from his PA from Cologne, where the head office is, and she said, listen, Benedict's coming to London, and he wants to meet you guys because he's seen your book in German language.

5:55So in he comes to the gallery, and he says, look, I love this book. The next idea you've got for a book, come and see me in Cologne. so I said okay but in the meantime we had been phoned up by the chief commissioning editor at Thameson Hudson a legendary guy called Jamie Camplin who later became the CEO of the company telling us that don't pay any attention to this maverick way out there crazy guy Benedict Ashen because you know you don't want to do any business with him he's into comic books you know it's just not exactly what Demson Hudson was doing and well we thought well let's meet him and make our own mind up and super charming and really entertaining and so in our contract for this first book it said already like we this is Demson Hudson we have first refusal on your next one we thought my god we're already talking about a second book I mean this is unbelievable so sure enough we got the next idea and it was to do a book dedicated to the chair and a big book on the chair and feature like a thousand of them.

7:10And even to this day, that's our best-selling book. So we made the pitch to Thames & Hudson and they said, well, we don't know. We're going to have to trial it at the Frankfurt Book Fair. And if we can't sell a co-edition, then we'll have to decline it. And the irony was they didn't think they'd be able to get a German publisher for it. So, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you can guess what happened. They came back from Frankfurt, declined the book because they couldn't get a German publisher interested. Within days, I was on a plane to Cologne, presenting Benedict with this book. And it's still to this day, our best selling book of all time.

7:48And whenever we saw Jamie Camplin after that, it was just, I can't believe that happened that we turned that book down.

7:55The Gstaad Guy:So for the listeners today that may not be watching the podcast and seeing the book in between us, and they may not be familiar with your past work or Tashin's work, I'd like to describe what your books typically look like and feel like and how they storytell. And if that first book was as beautifully visual and large as the one between us today. Well, we've been at this now for 35 years, and the Watches book, we count this as two because it's a double volume. I think legitimately it can be seen as two books. I mean, it's almost a thousand pages, you know. That's a huge book. I mean, even 500 on it is a big book.

8:39over that time we've become better and better and better our craft right we become more efficient more productive and more creative and and uh and thankfully we're working for and mostly have over those 35 years the greatest of all time illustrated art book publisher without a shadow of a doubt benedict tashin is in a league of his own and my god we are so lucky to be working with him and you know it's always a big team effort okay so what we're doing today we're at the top of our game i have to say i'm so happy to say you know um after all these years we're still well better than ever i would say making these huge colossal books which are a new type of book really because i mean they're they're super lavishly illustrated okay but then there's a lot of scholarship that's been lavished on them too.

9:34So sort of like a hybrid book. I mean, to call these books that we're doing now coffee table books, I find, I consider quite derogatory because it implies a certain banality, right? And I mean, there are coffee table books that are super content light, and this is anything but. This is at the other end of the spectrum, okay? And we really pride ourselves on doing this because I have to say in the watch literature, there seem to be more content-like books than anywhere else. It's really painful for me to see that and for the publishers to be taking the readers as, you know, to have low expectations.

10:11So the brief for this book was pretty much the brief that we always get from Benedictus. It's an unspoken brief, okay? And that is create the best book there's ever been on the subject. And whatever that takes in new imagery that needs to be generated and the amount of text that you grind out. There's over 200 ,000 words of text in this book. I mean, that is a serious amount of text. And, you know, let's not discuss the budget because there really isn't one. It's what it takes.

10:47The Gstaad Guy:And it weighs 11 kilos. Yeah. It's heavy in a lot of different ways. Exactly. It's even physically heavy. so that's no joke I mean actually since we're talking about the ultimate collector of watches book I'd love to talk about the first couple of words ultimate collector you've both been exposed to collectors of all sorts from what it sounds your entire lives I mean Charlotte since you were a child and I think it's also we both trained at Sotheby's Institute at different times. So we got to know the sale room world, which is all about collecting, obviously. But we've been so unbelievably lucky throughout our lives to meet the most incredible people, often collectors.

11:38And it's strange with collecting. Often people take you in. If you share a same passion or interest in something, they actually take you in a lot more than maybe they would otherwise because there's something to bond on it doesn't matter that they're super wealthy and you're not or um you know whatever there's that communality of interest and um so we've been to some extraordinary places and we've met extraordinary people and that's the best you know you have a wonderful job you meet all these amazing people and we have too and we often do quite a lot of interviews in our books too, which I love doing.

12:25Because again, you get to know these people. You can ask the difficult questions and the interesting questions. Yeah, it's just been a great journey. Absolutely. I love that.

12:36The Gstaad Guy:I think when two collectors are passionate about the same collectible, the connection makes sense. It's something that can be assumed. but I've seen while meeting collectors of different things actually lots of overlap in terms of personality traits between these people when their collections actually can have nothing to do with one another yeah so I'd love to actually learn more about the collectors you've studied and if you could tell me more about the things they have in common as people aside from the collections themselves. What does it mean to be a passionate collector? Well, it helps to be able to afford your hobby.

13:27And our books are focusing at the high end of whatever it is, cars, motorcycles, now watches. And as time has gone on, I'm noticing more and more the commonalities between these collectors. The first thing I have to say is how nice they are. to a man and i don't think i've met any women inevitably well i mean we're talking about cars motorcycles and watches okay it is male dominated that's the reality and so the top collectors are men and um it was incredibly enlightening to be doing this watches book and to meet the various top collectors in the world, not least Patrick Jetred, who is the owner and the architect of the Oak collection, that's one of a kind, which is based in Geneva.

14:23It's the biggest private collection of Patek Philippe watches in the world by a long way. The only thing that rivals it is the Patek Museum itself, right? And my god, we became really good friends, you know, to the point where he actually gifted me the most beautiful watch um just out of friendship not because of anything else just because he knew that we were passionate about the subject you know so passionate that we did this book with him i mean he virtually all of the pateks we feature in the book come from the oak collection and and but you know there there was a similar personality in our motorcycle book a German guy living near Lake Constance, and he's the top motorcycle collector in the world.

15:12Again, just the loveliest person and so generous with time and information and whatever he could do to help make the book as good as it could be. It was a real joy. And we seek out these people because it's all in the title, right? Ultimate collector, whatever. So you need to find the top guy or the top few guys. And there were some other ones that we worked with here on the watches book that, you know, I mean, we're talking about multi-million pound watches here, okay? Sending them to a place where they could be safely photographed specifically for the book. And this happened time and time again.

15:59And, you know, for this book, 59 of the 100 watches were photographed completely from the ground up, new for presentation in this book. And that meant getting access to the private collectors, right? And I'm constantly amazed at how free and, you know, easy they are with allowing access like that. And I guess maybe because it's a book for Tashin or maybe they... But we also understand collecting, and I think they get that.

16:31The Gstaad Guy:Yeah. This podcast is brought to you by Pubelle, bringing you interchangeable charm jewellery, hand-painted with enamel on styling silver, allowing you to celebrate all the things you love and all the things you might question through interchangeable styling silver bracelets, bangles, whoop, charms, mini-charm bracelets, rings, cufflings, and much more. and all customizable through our 3D builder on poubelle.com. That is poubelle, P-O-U-B-E-L, dot com. Thank you so much for watching. And now back to the podcast. I'm very interested in the psychology of collecting. Charlotte is doing a PhD or just finishing a PhD on this very subject.

17:16Yeah, I mean, for my sins. but there definitely is a specific neurotype that keeps coming up again and again and again and I mean you'd call it ADHD or Audi for short which is basically a combination of ADHD and autism that if you actually analyze collecting and and that neurotype it's really quite interesting because for autism, one of the main diagnostic things is system of collecting. So I'm an absolute addict of love on the spectrum. And, you know, the first questions that these blind dates go on is, what's your special interest and what do you collect? And it's always, you know, the girls, it's dolls, the men, it's swords, strangely enough.

18:13so so there's definitely that that thing but then adhd is really interesting because adhd is caused by low dopamine and the thrill of the chase when you collect is a dopamine you know adrenaline dopamine rush um and then you get you know you've you buy the stuff and then you get the serotonin you know happy happy thing so you can see that the combination of the two sort of makes a lot of sense. And it's that sort of neurotype. The diagnosis has only been since 2013. So relatively new. Before that, it was believed that if you had autism, it precluded ADHD and vice versa. And now there's a much more understanding of that specific neurotype.

19:04And, you know, we've met a lot of collectors. And you can see this trait coming through. They're often very outgoing, whatever, but my God, they love the system, the thing of the actual collecting. So it's an interesting area. And, you know, really could be doing with a lot more research. And especially when you look at historical collections, you know, often historical collections are framed by, oh, this was an eccentric who was you know collecting it but actually no probably it was someone who had that neurotype and and so you know it's a hidden history too it's a neurodiverse hidden history

19:44The Gstaad Guy:there um which i think is fascinating so i love that yeah i'm fascinated by the art of collecting even in categories where i may not have much personal interest i mean i happen to love watches and I happen to know little to nothing about motorcycles but I'm as amazed by a passionate motorcycle collector as I am by a passionate watch collector because I find mastery in anything, an obsession in anything to be a really beautiful thing. And the path someone goes down to gather knowledge with a smile on their face and in many ways in a non-academic environment. It's usually in free time and they turn something very playful into something actually quite academic, which also sounds like a path that you both went on, especially with the PhD now.

20:41The Gstaad Guy:Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of our favorite pastimes is going to like the flea market in Spain every Saturday or Sunday and literally, you know, we'll pick up stuff. He has the most incredible collection of Spanish cooking pots. I mean, really. But it's actually a sort of academic, you know, study of shapes. It's a beautiful collection. Well, they're not necessarily cooking pots. They're vessels of some kind. Yeah. But, yeah, they're timeless. You know, they go back even before the Roman occupation. Yeah. But the first line in the Watches book that you'll read is a little abstract that we wrote to preface the whole thing.

21:25And it goes, collecting is often a lifelong passion because the urge to hunt never dies. I love that. And the longer you hunt, the more skills you learn to catch the best prey. Until ultimately you become hooked on the thrill of the chase. So that's what it's all about, is hunting. It never dies. And I really, oh, we totally get that. I mean, it doesn't matter what it is. you know um terracotta you know water vessels uh to uh patek philippe watches anything in between

21:59The Gstaad Guy:you're hunting always for it and on your side you're hunting for the information and the stories yeah that's right that's right that's right and and you hit the nail right on the head because it is absolutely all about storytelling and the stories are amazing you know and i think one of our usps is that in the stories that we tell we can weave in like super technical stuff but in a way that makes it this is charlotte's skill by the way she does most of the writing uh she can take an incredibly complex and technical subject weave it into the story in a way that makes it interesting and very readerly like when we did the motorcycle book i'm telling you my wife is a badass she could she can tell you all about desmodromic valve actuation you know in the famous ducati desmo uh engine well it's referring to the the valves and the way they move right they don't use springs it's like a cam system charlotte i just knew it inside and out i love deep diving into nerd nerddom and it's so funny because you know the the books that the ultimate collector series we've done for Tashin is very male subjects, you know, cars, motorbikes, watches.

23:17And I suppose I should have imposter syndrome, but I don't. But because I love deep diving into technical subjects, and then being able to basically translate them into more layman terms, but not losing it. I mean, if I remember, we did a book on plastics once and having to to explain the different chemical bonds and it's like well you know whatever elastomers are like a bowl of spaghetti i mean because then at least people can understand that so um so yeah it's all about storytelling and and design is the biggest story of them all because everything is designed often design is seen as like some add-on thing people oh i have you know designer belt or designer sunglasses, whatever, everything, every pair of sunglasses is designed or every belt is designed.

24:10Well, that should be every man-made thing is designed. Absolutely. You know, and has been since we were in the Stone Age. All products, more specifically, even all products of mankind have been to a greater or less extent designed. So it's a huge story. Things don't, man-made objects don't materialize out of nothing. There has to be some forethought that brings them into being, right? And that forethought is best defined as conception and planning. Three words, that's the definition of design, conception and planning. And you can trace that forethought that's been invested in the realization of a physical product.

24:49So far back, it predates Homo sapiens. It goes to Homo habilis, our earlier hominid ancestor, so named by Louis B. Leakey, the famous anthropologist, because Homo habilis means handyman. And he was handy because he made stone tools. So, you know, I mean, think about it. I mean, that's where the story of design begins 2.3 million years ago. Some people think it started at the Bauhaus, for goodness sake.

25:22The Gstaad Guy:you know i mean come on i mean your your second book was all about chairs correct right i'd love to learn more about that because that sounds like i mean the first chair that was designed is definitely not the first chair that was used i assume just sitting on a boulder can also be the chair and a lot of cultures have matte matte cult you know were matte cultures so um no chairs No chairs. And also chairs, you know, the status of chairs is a really big theme. But actually that book was interesting because, you know, we published it early 90s. And it was really a way of showing how design had evolved through one specific object.

26:09Yeah, that was fascinating. And that was a really interesting way. So you could basically see the different design styles come through. So no, it was a really good book. And I think it sold. The Thousand Shares book, which we did, which I think was, we did one shares book, then we did a few monographs, and then we did the Thousand Shares book, which was this huge block of a book. It's still selling. god knows how many years after but that was really almost like a introduction to design for a lot of people because everyone loves a chair you know it's they're easy to understand and there's something also very like watches actually you have a very intimate relationship with a chair it's cradling you and and the same with a watch you know watches have a very intimate relationship to people.

27:05Yeah, we were lucky in that we could tell a really interesting story about design through the chair. It wasn't just that we were showing an evolution of forms and types and materials applications, but we, for the first time, like, I think even still came closest to defining a kind of a unified theory of design. And the way we did that is we bolted two things together. We synthesized two big ideas. the first one was the idea of connections which was first kind of articulated by charles eames who's one of the most famous chair designers of all time in american in california you probably know of him and he he he came out with this idea of how everything connects but he was really thinking more specifically about the structure of the chair okay and then and the way it related to say the manufacturer and the concerns of the consumer and so on but when he when he really began analyzing it more deeply he realized my god everything connects and i mean everything does connect ultimately at the most profound level right we won't go there in terms of quantum mechanics but i can tell you that everything in the universe is connected okay i can assure you okay but going going back to design so we bolted the idea the eamesian notion of connections onto what was then state-of-the-art design theory which had to do with design rhetoric and the idea that a designer is consciously articulating an argument you know through an object that he's designed he's trying to persuade you of its usefulness its functionality it's beauty whatever through various means okay and that's the first time that's ever been and maybe the only time that's ever been attempted we're still like all these years later proud of that and we we could do that through the chair because of the nature of the connections as charlotte just said in that it does connect with you physically and therefore emotionally and in all sorts of other ways that affects your you know well-being and uh it's unique in that regard okay and status too many different the chairman you know um yeah yeah exactly exactly case in point so yeah that was we were sort of laying down a marker there saying okay look this uh there's more to it than what you might realize and then we we started out specializing in mid century furniture which was a good place to start for the reasons i've just outlined there there's this big story behind how things came about and the meaning of things and then we generalized so we specialized and then generalized into the whole world of design which is the biggest story out there way bigger than the story of art it starts sooner there's more things involved like materials applications you know it various constructional processes you know economics economics you know government regulations you know all sorts of different things that don't come into the story of art are in the story of design and so there i mean probably maybe the story of our biological evolution is bigger but i don't think by much the story of design is a huge story and so that's what we began addressing in as many different ways as we could and one of the ways we're addressing it now is through the world of collecting which is fascinating but at a very high level okay because that's where all the action is yeah

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32:04The Gstaad Guy:Thank you so much and now back to the podcast. We recently had on the podcast a guest named Benjamin Polin, whose father is Pierre Polin, and incredible furniture designers and artists. And we spoke about the art and process of designing with constraints and without, and how furniture with the constraints of a room can create a story that's entirely different to one without that same constraint. And the categories you've spoken about all very much seem to me as designs with constraints. I think motorcycles have to fit within a lot of technology packed into a very small space. Watches are that to the nth degree.