Tat London Journal

Welcome to this hodge podge of picks. I have wandered through some of my favourite dealers and selected pieces that made me think, quite simply, I would like to own that. Which is, of course, problematic. I have eclectic taste, so everything I choose inevitably looks like a hodge podge. My home is a blooming mismatch.

By God, she’s done it again. Blue Firth, long-time contributor to Tat London, has a knack for bringing to the surface things that should be so firmly under my nose that I always feel faintly embarrassed not to have known them already, and yet entirely grateful for the introduction. After her essential primer on the work of Lucinda Lambton, she has now made the imperative connection to one of the greatest television presenters of all time, Jonathan Meades.

The signs were there early on. Ian had what might be called the collector gene: first revealed in childhood through an earnest hoard of Corgi and Dinky cars, and later through a formidable vinyl collection shaped by curiosity rather than algorithms. In the days before Spotify, his listening spanned rock, jazz and classical, eventually leading him to opera, a passion he learned to savour during formative years spent in Venice, Florence and Bologna.