Coffee with Nigel Peake & Benoit-Pierre Emery

A former architect of Irish origins, Peake has already designed fabrics, wallpaper and decorative panels for Hermès. His slender fingers are those of an drawer: with apparent nonchalance he lightly strokes the edge of a small plate where leaves and coloured squares overlap, stylised yet incredibly evocative. We have coffee with the creative director for Art de la Table at Hermès, Benoit-Pierre Emery, while observing the objects we hold in our hands.
AR

Colour, colour. And not just in this collection. It’s your signature, your trademark. Your work itself. But what does colour represent for you? It can’t be a purely aesthetic choice, there’s got to be more to it.
NP

Colour is always something more for me. A sensation, an atmosphere. It has a soul. I think colours are like words, you need to choose the right ones in order to express yourself. I draw because I cannot find the right words, but the process is the same.
AR

Sometimes I can’t find the right terms to convey what I have in mind either. I struggle with tricky problems, which can occasionally be quite fun.
NP

The most complex moments are usually the best, because that is when you reach something you weren’t expecting. You know when you check the etymology of the word and discover its origin? It’s like when you want a colour, you go to the shop but you can’t find the blue you are looking for. You end up finding another shade that nobody wanted, but which you like even more. Coincidences can be positive too, because you adapt to what you find. Some days you might like blue, others yellow. It depends how much coffee you’ve drunk [laughter]. It depends on your emotions. Blue is my favourite: I like it because to my eyes it contains lots of different colours. That’s how I see it.
AR

What are the reference points and inspiration for your work?
NP

I really think that it’s the things around me, nothing in particular. Even though I buy a lot of books, it is what I see everyday that really counts for me. Shadows, trees, leaves, the sky. It’s about trying to represent the world or capture it, in some way.
AR

The Italian word “lieve” expresses a specific type of lightness with a positive acceptation.
NP

I really like that word. Do you know Italo Calvino’s essay on lightness? It’s a beautiful text. There’s a part where he says that the poet jumps over the rock with the lightness of his touch. I can’t remember the exact quotation, but it’s really beautiful.
AR

It feels very appropriate to the collection that you have designed for Hermès: “A Walk in the Garden”.
NP

Bien sûr [laughter]! It looks like I have drawn directly onto the porcelain. That was always our goal, although it is very hard to achieve. What I like is that it’s not too heavy, you wouldn’t think that much work went into it, and yet…
AR

Quite the opposite!
NP

That’s the trick and we pulled it off very well.
BPE

No matter how much effort you put into a project, that effort must never be apparent. We wanted to maintain the energy and ancestral bond of Nigel’s drawings, but it was hard to obtain the same effect because the surface of porcelain is not easy to control. We had to do lots of tests and prototypes. We wanted the precision of Nigel’s pure line, to give the impression that he had drawn directly onto the pieces.
AR

How long did it take?
BPE

About a year.
AR

A time frame that I imagine is an integral part of the process.
BPE

You have to be patient and trusting, and optimistic too. You look at the first prototype, which came out pretty well, and you treasure it, while you pass the time trying to make it as perfect as possible.
NP

It took us the same amount of time that it would have taken to create a real garden, we could have planted trees – although perhaps not oaks. When you are doing something, the sense of time changes, and that is amazing. There are deadlines to meet, of course, but you need time to make something and that is neither negative or positive, but just a fact.

No matter how much effort you put into a project, that effort must never be apparent. We wanted to maintain the energy and ancestral bond of Nigel’s drawings, but it was hard to obtain the same effect because the surface of porcelain is not easy to control.

AR

Can’t the process be sped up in any way?
NP

No, that absolutely cannot happen.
BPE

We didn’t work on the collection with a precise date in mind. It is so important to find the right expression and the right tone for every project that we develop that we prefer to wait if it’s not ready.
AR

The colours, the time. All of this comes back to the specifics of the material. Nigel, you have a background in architecture. What is your relationship with ceramics?
NP

This was my first time using ceramics, which is why it was so fun and enjoyable. I had never tackled a rigid surface, I usually work with paper, fabrics or other materials. It has a magnificent quality: when you hold it up, light shines through.
AR

This makes me think that the size is of importance too. I love this little square plate, for example. These are objects that you want to touch.
NP

The important thing for us was how these objects would be held in real life. We wanted them to adapt to the human body, which is why they were practically all designed one by one – with the skill of the hand that draws. There was no copy and paste, it’s not just graphic design. We really wanted the corner to be this precise shape, we thought about it. And the leaves, which almost come over the edge. I like them that way, even though they aren’t regular. These objects are like a tree: wonderfully irregular.
AR

“A Walk in the Garden” reminds me of exercise books when I was little. As kids we would draw coloured borders that mixed graphic and natural elements, leaves and squares. It was a depiction of our lives at the time: the routine of school on the one hand and the countryside calling from out of the window on the other.
NP

I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My drawings depict trees and the structure of the city that I had to visit sometimes, as though the two worlds were united, melded together. And there are architectural designs too: once you learn certain things, you can’t eliminate them. They remain inside you in some way.
BPE

Tableware is a part of everyday life. And very much so for Nigel’s collection, which is joyful and colourful, a burst of positivity with your breakfast. We like to think that these pieces are perfect for a holiday with friends, in the countryside perhaps.
NP

Or for wet mornings in Ireland! While you have a cup of coffee.
BPE

With the same idea of lightness. It was important to us that this line was different from anything that came before, that it had a strong identity and reflected the vision of an artist. We had Nigel in mind from the very beginning, when Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the artistic director of Hermès, wanted to develop a language similar to a garden. An English garden, or an Irish garden perhaps, given Nigel’s origins…
NP

Now it’s getting political [laughter]

I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My drawings depict trees and the structure of the city that I had to visit sometimes, as though the two worlds were united, melded together. And there are architectural designs too: once you learn certain things, you can’t eliminate them. They remain inside you in some way.

BPE

The English garden is actually very important to our philosophy, because it is a place of great freedom. It is not organised in the same way as a French garden, which is designed around symmetry. If there is a structure behind the English garden, it is imperceptible.
NP

Which means that anything can emerge.
BPE

When you work on a tableware collection, it is vital that each piece is individual but at the same time part of a coherent group. That is why you have to think in global terms. It reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle, where every piece is independent but, in the end, contributes to create a unique image. Nigel says that every element of “A Walk in the Garden” is a plant, a tree or a flower.
NP

It was like creating a garden for the table, which is wonderful because it’s different every day: three people or four people…
AR

Perhaps that is precisely what we need at this moment in time: a little garden to cultivate, a beautiful object to hold, a cup of coffee.
NP

I believe that living a simpler life is a very human desire. My favourite place in the world is the table, because you can draw and eat there. It is something very modest, yet in a sense not modest in the slightest: you can have it all, or you can do absolutely nothing. You can simply sit there and have a cup of coffee, or you can write a book, or do anything you like. This flat surface offers infinite possibilities. Sometimes you interrupt what you were doing, have a coffee and then get back to work. That’s important, you know? There weren’t many places to get a coffee when we were working on “A Walk in the Garden”. There was just the one amazing place with hardly any seats: we couldn’t even sit down sometimes. The way they prepared the coffee felt like a ritual. This place transmitted something to us and made us want to come back just to feel that positive feeling again. I think that is what I love the most about Paris. I love it for these little things, it is a magical city. They literally throw the coffee at you in London.
BPE

Nigel really is a wonderful person, as well as being very talented. It’s been incredible collaborating with him, just like working on a garden, immersed in nature, even though we were doing our research and working from the office. It’s taken a lot of different steps.
NP

We managed to keep the final product very similar to the first sketches, I like how this piece resembles the original drawing in some way. I think it is always a good sign when, even after all the different design phases, the first sketch can still be recognised. It is the sign of a very simple development process, of a very precise job.
BPE

I’d like to add something. When we were weighing up whether to use a French garden or an English garden, we discovered that in the 18th century, the latter was created and designed by artists. Then we decided to work with Nigel, choosing a very contemporary and, for us, unusual feel for the project. And we realised that this almost echoed the tradition: having an artist design our garden was perfect. In the end, “A Walk in the Garden” is a terribly realistic imaginary garden, a vision closely linked to the world of Nigel Peake. That is why we wanted to collaborate with him on this project, so we could explore in every possible direction.

This flat surface offers infinite possibilities. Sometimes you interrupt what you were doing, have a coffee and then get back to work. That’s important, you know? There weren’t many places to get a coffee when we were working on “A Walk in the Garden”.

AR

Which piece would you choose to start composing your personal garden?
BPE

I think a small bowl perhaps.
NP

Yesterday I had an answer in mind, but today I’m going to give you a completely different response. I would start with a cup, because I love coffee [laughter], whereas yesterday I would have said a bowl. Each person will have a different approach to the collection and I love this aspect of it. You know, I’m looking at a teacup now and thinking that it will be somebody’s favourite piece, depending on their taste. Perhaps it will be the shape that captures them, or that particular blue point. I love that everyone can choose according to their personality and desires, and that they don’t have to necessarily stick to a structure. I hope that people perceive it as an open project.
AR

I like coffee too, and this little cup in particular. Which comment about “A Walk in the Garden” has most struck you?
NP

When my dad said he liked the teapot. My dad is not the type to give compliments so… I know that might seem a bit silly.
AR

Not at all, I think it’s so interesting to have a feedback that is based on real and personal experience.
BPE

Then there was Pierre’s reaction. Pierre is a designer on the Hermès creative team and he simply said “I want these plates at my house”. We have tried to attract younger generations with this new collection and that is why his comment made me particularly happy.