Florence Evans is an art dealer, historian, curator, collector and mud larker. Her Instagram flo_finds is here for mudlarking. And here for art collecting. This is a Guardian profile featuring Florrie and other mudlarks.
We chat on what does mudlarking tell us about history ? What does art tell us about being human ?
…we mustn't forget is that ultimately there's a real human connection with beauty. So conceptual art aside which serves an important purpose and helps us to think and challenges us in many ways. On the other hand, there's a human need, I think, a kind of nesting instinct to have art for the home, things of beauty to lift your spirits. I think that's really elemental. …
Florrie chats on the cultural history of mudlarking, the stories found objects represent from the both the darker side of human history such as beads and the slave trade, as well as the lighter sides of found items.
We discuss one of her favourite finds, a whole child’s shoe from the Tudor era.
We chat on what we’ve puzzled out from our river finds including a hand blown glass apothecary bottle from the 1600s.
We discuss: bottles, beads, coins, stories, Roman items, buttons and costumes and more…
We touch on her philosophy as an art collector and what art means to us as humans.
One of my happiest achievements in my career thus far was curating an exhibition on mudlarking and mudlarked art in 2019 for the Totally Thames Festival. That was an exhibition that I put on showing art by artists featuring mudlark finds, still life photographs by Hannah Smiles; a photographer of mudlarked finds and portraits of mudlarks as well that she had taken. That was in the Bargehouse which is a massive warehouse space on the South Bank by the Oxo Tower; so right by the river.
That was a joy to be asked to do that and it felt like it was a fusion of both my passion, hobby; mudlarking and what I do in work which is curate and look at art. So that was a fusion of art and mudlarking and looking at craft and elevating it to art. Looking at history and saying, "This is part of who we are as human beings. We create-- There is an impulse and an urge to make things of beauty. Even things that are utilitarian, there's beauty to be found." And that kind of links back to the philosophy of someone like William Morris who believed that art should always be useful and beautiful.
What art Florrie likes and collects and the challenge of modern art.
Florrie gives her advice on art collecting and life.
I've always done what I love and it gives me great satisfaction. You can always find your people, you can always find your niche even just by going online. It's amazing how the world opens up. As long as you are doing something that you're passionate about, you should be okay.
Available wherever you get podcasts. Video above or on YouTube and transcript below.
PODCAST INFO
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3gJTSuo
Spotify: https://sptfy.com/benyeoh
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/benjamin-yeoh
Transcript (only lightly edited): Florrie in conversation with Ben
(Time stamps only very approximate)
Ben
Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Florence Evans. Florrie is a mudlarker extraordinaire. She's also well followed on Instagram under account, under @flo_finds. She also runs an independent gallery representing artists as well as an art collector herself. Florrie, welcome.
Florence Evans (Florrie)
Thank you so much, Ben, and thank you for the little praise scene which sounds very grand when you put it like that. But honestly, I'm not tall and I don't technically have a gallery. I do popups.
Ben (00:33):
Popups. Well, an independent representation, I guess.
Florrie (00:37):
Exactly.
Ben (00:38):
So thinking about mudlarking, one of the things I've really loved about walking down the river is the connection with nature. Something both man-made, I guess, with the bank and the foreshore and also the connection with history; a time and a place, one person's rubbish being another person's treasure. What do you think perhaps for you is most underrated about mudlarking or walking on the river?
Florrie (01:14):
Well, I think that a lot of Londoners don't realize that they have the river as a place to go and as a refuge which makes me sad. I mean, I think more and more people are discovering it thankfully. But I was very fortunate. I grew up near the river. My mum who is Australian and from Sydney always said that she had to live near water. So as a child, she would take my brother and I down to have walks along the foreshore and that felt very special. But I don't think many people necessarily realize that they can go down onto the banks of the Thames, or they think that you have to climb down a ladder to get down there. But actually there are numerous access points. So it is a place that needs to be visited more.
I think when you do go down, it is an extraordinary experience because as you say, there's this sense of nature in the middle of the city and a connection with the city's past. You can't escape the fact that you are walking upon detritus centuries; old detritus, whether it's old bricks or broken bits of pipe stem or plastic that was chucked into the river yesterday. It's a very specific terrain and it has a very specific smell as well, I should add. I love the smell of the River Thames. I imagine for some people that's a horrendous thought. But it's slightly briny, it has elements of the seaside to it. And I do think of parts of the foreshore as being like a beach. In fact, my daughter calls it the beach because where we live in East London, the stretch of river by Wapping is very sandy. So yeah, it's a connection with nature and it's a connection with the city and it's quite a special space.
Ben (03:25):
It does feel like a beach to me. So in London, fortunately or unfortunately today-- people in the video can see this. You will need a pass. You do need to get a license from the PLA to go mudlarking. And I think they are currently-- as of the end of 2022, kind of full up because there's over 5,000 licenses. But I guess when recently thinking about finds-- The last time I was at the river, I don't go so often-- Talking about the pipes here. Again, on the video you can see there's these little stem pipes. I think for a lot of people and certainly for me, it was one of the first finds. I still get excited and my son still gets excited when he finds one. I'm also on the ever lookout for a bead and I haven't found an interesting bead. I know famously you always hunt for beads and you have some amazing ones. So maybe the question would be what are your most exciting finds or quirky finds or those that you've had? Maybe you can talk about your love of beads.
Florrie (04:34):
Yeah, sure. Well, it's interesting that you say that one of the first things you found was a clay pipe stem because one of the first things I ever found as a child was a clay pipe stem and I didn't really know what it was. I was mentioning to you earlier actually that I first made the connection when I went on a school trip to Hampton Court and saw some examples of clay pipes that they had found under the Tudor kitchens from the time of Henry VIII. And I went, "Oh my God, those are what I've been finding by the river." That was very exciting to me. It was a tangible piece of archeology. From there, I started to realize that the river had these little scraps of history to be found and then I think I started looking more carefully.
I remember a particular find-- one of my first, again, after the pipe stems was a Venetian Millefiori bead. I don't have it today unfortunately. I can't be sure whether it wasn't just dropped off someone's 1980s earring or whether it was some amazing Renaissance's trade bead. I will never know. But for me, that was a very exciting find. Today, I do make a point of looking for beads. And again, where I live in East London, I have found an area which is rich in trade beads. Trade beads have quite a dark history. They were used as a commodity to trade with indigenous peoples in the Americas and in Africa because in these places the Europeans worked out, they didn't know how to make glass. So a bead was seen as a very precious object. And of course, they were small and they were portable. They would sell them for what would've been thought of as a high price.
So you could buy literally slaves in Africa with beads. So some of them are known as slave beads; particular types of beads. You could buy beaver pelts from Native Americans because obviously, fur was hugely coveted over here but also incredibly important over there in the harsh winters. But they were prepared to sell the pelts for these tiny little glass beads. So they tell a story that is fascinating and I think is important to be brought to light today so that we understand what colonialism did and how our ancestors conquered-- if you want to call it, far flung places and people. The mind boggles really when you think of beads in that way.
Ben (07:48):
Wow, I hadn't heard that full story in their history like that. Walking down the river it also does-- and these objects really brings home how what humans’ value is a part of the myth and the story. You could say this about money. Money's a trust thing, you can't even touch it digitally. And we've given it value. We have in London this idea of a peppercorn rent because peppercorns used to be extremely valuable and actually they're not so valuable anymore. Things like beads or whatever we've had to represent used to be very valuable. They might have had a certain meaning; a dark meaning or a light meaning. We can reinterpret that today. Sometimes we don't even understand what we're looking at or what it means and I think that connection's really amazing. I had once found a piece of flint which I thought had been fairly worked on. So I did wonder how old it would be, but other people thought maybe it hadn't been worked on that long. But what's the oldest thing then you might have found? Because some of the worked flint could be over a couple of thousand years old going back that far.
Florrie (08:59):
Yeah. I would say I have quite a considerable collection of worked flint tools; Neolithic scrapers and cores and things like that. Not an arrowhead yet, unfortunately. But yes, I would say my flint tools are my oldest finds definitely.
Ben (09:19):
And that's, I guess because there used to be communities all during that time which lived on the river, lived from the river, and by the river and all of that.
Florrie (09:27):
Absolutely. I mean, this is it. The river is a place where people always have to settle near water. It gives life literally but also it's used as a dump where you chuck things as well. So it's kind of this wonderful contradiction in a way. The river sees communities flourish and grow and it sees communities kind of-- not the demise of, but it has just seen the ebb and flow of time and people. I find that quite interesting.
Ben (10:12):
This is very London centric and it's got a particular rich history. In fact, I think there have been mudlarkers for several hundred years where the treasure hunters of 300 years ago were looking for different sorts of treasure today. But I was on a beach or a foreshore, I guess, in an American city and found not very old detritus. But I guess you can mudlark anywhere in some of those sort of history, although I guess river cities are always going to be the richest. People do these bottle bank hunting and rubbish dump sort of hunting. So have you done any other type of hunting like that?
Florrie (10:51):
I do. I go digging in Victorian and Edwardian bottle dumps on the outskirts of London to find the vintage bottles and things. I have an endless desire to find these things. I'm a regular Womble. I just like picking stuff up and digging shit up-- excuse my language. But it is a recreational drive today and I think it's an important distinction that you made in the past. The term mudlarking is a Victorian term for the destitute people of London in Victorian times who would go looking for things like old rope to sell, lumps of coal, things that had fallen off ships when they were being unloaded or packed. They were looking for things that they could trade and sell or even just food. They saw the river and mudlarking as a source of income. Often, it was sort of poor children who would go into the muddy, low tide without even any boots or shoes on because often they could feel things with their feet in the mud and use their feet almost as a sensory way of finding things.
But then, I mean, it goes back beyond there. There are 17th century and 18th century drawings and engravings of people looking for Roman finds for the Antiquarian collectors. You would get locals wading in the Medway on the coast line looking for Roman pots using long pikes to dig into the mud to feel for pot shards underneath. It has been going on for centuries. I should add actually also the poor little destitute Victorian children who would look for things to sell from the river would sometimes come across artifacts which they would sell to Antiquarian dealers. So there have always been treasure hunters. But in those days it was generally rich people paying the impoverished to go out and find the treasure for them rather than get their hands dirty themselves.
And this-- I'm sorry to go off on a tangent-- brings to mind an amazing picture that I handled a couple of years ago by an artist called Walter Grieves. It is a very detailed painting of the Chelsea embankment from 1876 showing the Chelsea Regatta. There were numerous people that he drew on the foreshore watching the race and they were all men. There were no women down on the foreshore. That's another thing to remember. Women wouldn't have wanted to get their skirts muddy. It would've been considered indecorous to go down there. Only women destitute women and mudlarks would've gone down onto the riverbank. But if you had any sense of decorum, you wouldn't go down at low tide unless to watch a race and you were a man.
Ben (14:46):
Wow. So it shows everything about our history with gender, trade, colonialism, and everything. That brings to mind a couple of things. One is how oysters used to be a peasant, a poor person's food; similar type of things before it kind of changed through. Do you think the Romans themselves would've mudlarked? And I wonder what they would've mudlarked for? I guess it might've been too early. But I imagine they were on the river and they did find things.
Florrie (15:16)
Oh God, yes. It's interesting because there are pockets of London where you find lots of Roman detritus. Obviously, that's because they were very active in the center of London and that was where Londinium rose up from the river by St. Paul's; that kind of area. But yeah, what did they find? I imagine again, there must have been always trade on the river and there would've been mudlarks and locals looking for things that had been dropped off the boats. Of course there will always be opportunists.
Ben (15:56):
Yeah. Even in modern day. The most valuable thing that I've found which wasn't very valuable was a half penny from I think the 1950s or sixties when we still had half penny. But I think if you were a mudlark from then, people would've been dropping coins. And if you find a coin, that would've been your week or maybe even your month if it was a particularly good coin.
Florrie (16:18):
Absolutely. Another thing to mention with regards to coins, obviously you had all the dockers who would be dropping their [detritus] and things as they were loading and unloading boats. But there are certain parts of the river where there were spectacles such as the Regatta and you would get people going down and dropping coins from their pockets. Also, there were kind of your London pick pockets who just as today, might steal someone's wallet and then throw it into the river. You would presumably have that happening and things being thrown in the river. As you can imagine, a kind of Fagan type character or one of his children stealing things. Suddenly realizing they're going to get caught, chucking it in the river to then go and retrieve it later on at low tide.
Ben (17:19):
I can imagine that's been happening for thousands of years.
Florrie (17:21):
All sorts going on. Yeah.
Ben (17:24):
Interesting. I'm just thinking outside of London for one moment. Are there any other cities which are as famous for mudlarking? Are American cities too young? I guess some European ones must have a-- I guess it helps having a tidal river. I'm only thinking out loud, I haven't discovered this long enough. But are there other famous cities for mudlarking?
Florrie (17:46):
Absolutely. It is really helpful if you have a tidal river because obviously you can go down and search the river banks. There are mudlarks in the north of England, in Edinburgh as well, and Scotland. Then in America, there is a lot of mudlarking that goes on around New York for art Deco treasures. Probably the place I would most like to go mudlarking but it's not titled and it requires actual diving is in Netherlands, in Amsterdam. There are amazing treasure hunters there who literally go into the canals, dive, and bring out all these Dutch golden age artifacts which put all the things from the Thames to shame. Honestly, they're bringing out complete onion bottles from the 17th century, amazing complete delftware tiles; all sorts of extraordinary things. There's a real community of Dutch mudlarks. They're hardcore.
Ben (19:00):
It's almost beyond mudlarking.
Florrie (19:03):
They go down and they dive and it's incredible what they find.
Ben (19:06):
Wow. That's the next step. So that brings me to this little piece of glass that we found. Actually, Anishka, my partner found it. It's a piece of nothing, right? It's a bit of rubbish but we really loved it because it had these words. You can only make out “society unlimited.” We saw a couple of double op. So we looked it up and it was the co-op society. We puzzled it out that it was an old milk bottle from I think the 1930s or something like that. And what's great about these little things-- whatever you find-- if you have a little bit of something, there's a puzzle and a history that you can figure out from something medium to easy, hard like that to really complicated things. What's the best thing that you ever puzzled out?
Florrie (19:58):
That's a difficult question. You are right. These pieces of social history which you don't learn about in school books, these little personal stories that you get from written text are so satisfying to find and puzzle out. But I have to admit that the finds that fire me up are historical costume which don't necessarily have the little clues with the writing and the maker's marks. But having said that, I have a vast collection of buttons. On the backs of buttons you'll often have the maker's name and address. So you can have a deep Google and find the details or sometimes the birth and death dates of the tailors who made these buttons. That's always fascinating that you can go down a rabbit hole with those.
Ben (21:01):
And can you do that even without a mark because the shape and style are over time?
Florrie (21:06):
Absolutely. So you learn the fashions for different periods and so you learn to expect a certain shape for a certain period. For instance in the 18th century, buttons became very large and flat. So if you imagine a gentleman's waist coat, it would have these big shiny flat buttons. So they're very easy to date because it was specifically a fashion of the time, of the era. For a Tudor period button it's generally quite globular and small and round and often decorated. Then in the 17th century, button makers realize that they could make buttons-- they're called blowhole buttons that are hollow. So they're still round but they use less metal and therefore they're more economic to make. Less metal used, cheaper all round, cheaper to sell, and saving on materials. So you can definitely learn a lot about what period something might have come from by how it was made.
Ben (22:32):
I remember viewing a series of mudlarked knives and hadn't realized that the style of knife tells you a lot. And actually then if you find it with something else, you can really date that period. I'm told it's also the same with shoes. So shoes date really... Even modern day shoes, you can see this with trainers that you have. They're only sold in a two or three year period. So if you see one in a photo you can really tell roughly when that was.
Florrie (23:01):
That's right. In fact actually, one of my favorite finds that I have is a complete child's Tudor shoe. It's a very specific shape. Apart from the fact that the leather is very fragile and soft, it has this wonderful kind of pointy toe which is typical for the period. So that's one of my favorite finds. Also, the idea of a child's shoe, how did it end up in the river? You can play out all sorts of scenarios in your mind.
Ben (23:38):
Wow. What's the one you want to find that you haven't found? So you mentioned an arrowhead. I'd still love to find a bead. I'd love to find some worked flint which I could definitively say was old. I'd like to find a whole glass bottle-- but partly because I think glass often breaks so getting a whole one is going to be tricky.
Florrie (24:00):
Although actually glass bottles are incredibly well preserved in the deep mud. So maybe you're not going into the muddy end.
Ben (24:08):
Yeah. I'm mostly around Hammersmith and just walking on the top which is a well walked bit so it's not... I probably need a lucky storm to put something up or I need to go east one day or something like that.
Florrie (24:22):
Or you need to head towards Chiswick from Hammersmith because there are lots of bottles down that way as well. I'm giving secrets away. Oh, no.
Ben (24:33):
So what do you still lack in your collection which you would love?
Florrie (24:42):
I am very lucky because I have-- like to think of myself as being quite a good all-rounder, but I have time on my side which is that I've been doing this for years and years. So I have a well-stocked collection. I have found most things, Ben. That sounds really awful, but I have. I have found most things. What would I really love to find? A complete onion bottle would be a bucket list find for me. I just love the shape of the bottle. For anyone who doesn't know, an onion bottle is a 17th century style of wine bottle and it looks like an onion. It's globular and it has a flat base. There's an apocryphal tale whether this is true or not-- I think it probably isn't true but I like it. That they were designed to be bottom heavy so that when ships went out to sea they didn't roll around on the captain's table. You would have a heavy bottomed, flat bottomed bottle that would be there in the center of the captain's table and all the sailors could help themselves to a drink from it which is quite good.
Ben (26:03):
That's why you have to learn to dive and go to Holland.
Florrie (26:06):
Yeah, exactly. So I'd love to find one of those. I love finding worked bone artifacts, and until recently, I had never found a complete worked bone knit comb. I found one from the 1600s this year so that was a bucket list item ticked. But thinking of worked bone, I have found over the years numerous bone dominoes and gaming pieces but I have never found a Roman bone gaming piece. So I'd like to find a Roman gaming.
Ben (26:53):
And they're medium common or they're findable?
Florrie (26:55):
They're medium common. They're findable. The problem is I don't generally like mudlarking in the center of London where one finds them because it's too overcrowded for me. I go to the river also for peace, nature, to kind of be by myself, and for head space. So I'm not someone who likes to go and mudlark next to the hoards, but I feel like I should probably go a bit more often into the center of town and then I might find my bucket list Roman game encounter. But until then, I don't think I ever will find it.
Ben (27:34):
Talking about groups, we should mention that actually group visits-- Is it Thames Discovery?
Florrie (27:41):
That's right.
Ben (27:42):
They do tours. So if you're just interested in coming for a day in London or you're in London and just want to try it-- you're not going to do this every week and go up for a license-- That's one way of getting a taste for it and a little bit of history. I wouldn't say absolutely certain, but you're very likely to find at least a pipe stem. I think every time I go we still find a pipe stem and we're not even in a very particular rich bit, either walking along Hammersmith or by the Tate Modern.
Florrie (28:08):
Well, you guys must be eagle-eyed because not everybody finds a pipe stem. They're there to be found but they do blend into the pebbles so you have to be in tune. I recommend to anyone who is interested in going mudlarking and doing something with Thames Discovery-- While they can't get a license, they can do the Thames Discovery group tours-- To have a look at what these things look like online so that then you know what to look for. I think you have to have an idea because if you had never seen a clay pipe stem-- and I should add these are the fag butts of yesteryear. They're from literally clay smoking.
Ben (28:47):
They do look a little bit like cigarettes.
Florrie (28:49):
They do look like cigarettes. If you haven't seen them, you might not necessarily know to pick them up.
Ben (28:59):
Yeah, I agree. Maybe we'll finish on this part. You brought some of your own finds with you. Is there one you'd like to share?
Florrie (29:08):
Yeah. I've brought in several things but I do love glassware. There's something about glass that really does it for me. I thought I would show you my 17th century apothecary bottle which is tiny and it's like a miniature onion bottle actually. But it would've contained some kind of quack cure. God knows what medicine went in that.
Ben (29:37):
This is amazing. So for those not on the video, the glass has a really beautiful, translucent quality with greeny, very slightly oily rainbow colors. It has this kind of handmade quality because it's not quite regular. Only very slightly off regular, but it gives it a kind of really unique joy. And it's really tactile. You have it in your fingers and it feels like it has definitely been touched or shaped by humanness. I guess it was blown rather than with fingers. But because of that, very slight unevenness. There's a real quality of being connected to another human just me touching this and looking at it
Florrie (30:28):
Exactly. It's hand blown and it has been squished by the bottle maker to be slightly cuboid. So while the glass was still malleable, as it was cooling, they kind of pinched it. That's why it has this tactile quality, I think. So they've pinched it into this slightly sort of square shape and then left it to cool. It has such a fascinating hidden story that we'll never know. So from the glass maker, the glass blower to the apothecary-- what they chose to put in it, to the person who bought it to cure The Black Death, maybe. Who knows what their aspiration was that this medicine would cure? Did it work? Probably not.
Ben (31:23):
And you've dated it from 1600s?
Florrie (31:25):
This is from the 1600s. Probably the mid to late 1600s.
Ben (31:32):
And how can we tell?
Florrie (31:34):
From the tint of the glass. The kind of wonderful aqua color. From the way it's been made, the shape. And on the bottom, this kind of kick up and rough bit is called the pontil scar. That's where you have the scar from where it was blown and cut off the piece of glass. By the 18th century, they had worked out how to make glass completely transparent; the flint glass which has a slightly gray color to a modern eye but which was considered to be transparent then. But this still has that kind of slightly greeny aqua color of the earlier glass. This was as close as they could get in the 1600s and before then to transparent.
Ben (32:31):
That's amazing. So I would take something like that-- And today, if we put it on a little plinth or had it in a gallery, I think a lot of us would call it art. I guess there's always been through history a kind of, "Where does craft become art?" But I think even more so when we think about finds or there's a whole modern day sequence of found objects or found art or I guess earlier, but from the time of Duchamp's famous urinal where he takes it and puts it on a plinth and calls it art and it therefore becomes art. What do you think about how much if an artist or if anyone says something that they've created or even found or placed is art? Do we really think that's art? And how does that change the things through time?
I guess I ask it partly because it links into this. But I meet a lot of people today who think, "Oh, a lot of this modern art will go into post-modern." Doesn't seem to be art to them because it doesn't have some of that craft skill based. But people sort of read into how some modern art has gone and think about it, does value it in things like art and in that language of art. So I was wondering of your perspective of long art history and obviously you’re are very learned within mudlarking and objects, but also within modern art, even into masters in classics and how that's been viewed full time. So is art always art if an artist calls it such?
Florrie (34:10):
Well, that's a very big question that perhaps I can't fully answer. I think if someone creates something and decides that they want it to be viewed as art, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. It will be a piece of art if it has been created with artistic intent. Whether you think it's any good is another matter. But it is interesting. There are a lot of artists today who are fascinated by craft from the past and who work specifically with mudlark finds. In fact, I think there's an exhibition on view at Tate Modern at the moment which I haven't been to see yet. An installation of objects displayed by an artist and there are objects that she found in the Thames. I wish I could tell you who this artist is. I'm so sorry everybody. I haven't been to see it yet. Someone just mentioned it to me in passing the other day and said, "Oh, you should go and see."
But there we go. There's a whole mudlark display in Tate Modern so I think that sort of answers your question there. One of my happiest achievements in my career thus far was curating an exhibition on mudlarking and mudlarked art in 2019 for the Totally Thames Festival. That was an exhibition that I put on showing art by artists featuring mudlark finds, still life photographs by Hannah Smiles; a photographer of mudlarked finds and portraits of mudlarks as well that she had taken. That was in the Bargehouse which is a massive warehouse space on the South Bank by the Oxo Tower; so right by the river.
That was a joy to be asked to do that and it felt like it was a fusion of both my passion, hobby; mudlarking and what I do in work which is curate and look at art. So that was a fusion of art and mudlarking and looking at craft and elevating it to art. Looking at history and saying, "This is part of who we are as human beings. We create-- There is an impulse and an urge to make things of beauty. Even things that are utilitarian, there's beauty to be found." And that kind of links back to the philosophy of someone like William Morris who believed that art should always be useful and beautiful.
Ben (37:19):
Yes. And we were talking earlier about how there are these human impulses; children throwing stones in the river, people leaving hand prints in wet mud or cement, maybe cave painting hand prints. Maybe it's the same impulse and this impulse to be with nature and things. So some of my friends who don't really like or appreciate modern art think that it's not saying anything around that. But a lot of people who are into modern art or post-modern art kind of think, "Well, actually there is a story and language which maybe half of it is in the kind of the viewer's part-- we call it, I guess the beholden part." And maybe this is one reason that part of me is not too worried about AI (Artificial Intelligence) generated art because although you have the visual picture, there's a portion of any picture or object like we've discussed which has this whole other value or story or narrative behind it and what we make of it; whether it's to your earlier story about the dark side of beads or the light side of costume making.
It will always need a human or an audience or a reader to complete that. Yet I also worry sometimes that maybe some modern art or post-modern art has gone so far that they've left a lot of people behind because they've been working and building on all of these stories and every generation goes a bit further. I know you started off in old masters, but now you also deal with modern and living artists and things. Do you think this is much of a worry and do you find people outside of the art world? Do you think they're correct to be worried that they don't understand modern art? Or is this always one of those things a bit like these finds which you need to puzzle it out and appreciate to get perhaps the most out of it, although there's always a surface tactile craft quality as well?
Florrie (39:32):
Well, I think that there are tiers of art. And what we mustn't forget is that ultimately there's a real human connection with beauty. So conceptual art aside which serves an important purpose and helps us to think and challenges us in many ways. On the other hand, there's a human need, I think, a kind of nesting instinct to have art for the home, things of beauty to lift your spirits. I think that's really elemental. I certainly found as an art dealer that post-Covid coming out of lockdown, a lot of people had been in their homes going a bit stir crazy looking at their walls and had been rearranging their homes in their mind's eye. There was a kind of frenzied fever of art buying that happened both online during lockdown and immediately after lockdown. People had been art staffed and commercial art galleries were the first galleries to open because businesses were given special dispensation by the government.
Commerce had to carry on eventually. So they opened before museums and galleries. As a result-- I was working in a gallery at the time, the influx of visitors, the number of people who wanted to come just to see art was a massive uptick. I think that that was a direct result of people being in their home and feeling the need to rearrange their nests, but also to get out and see art again. They had felt starved of art and the need for beauty and a need to look at beautiful things to distract from what might be happening in the world. So I think that art has a very important place and people haven't actually become disconnected from it. But there is very much a difference between conceptual and AI and what you materially might have in the home, and I include craft in that.
But looking again at instinct, I think so much of what I love and what I do is an instinct. You are either a collector or you are not, but there's a definite core group of people who are fascinated and want to collect and want to find and look at things. My mum tells me that as a small baby once I'd learnt to crawl, I would go out into the garden and bring stones back in and arrange them under the kitchen table. I'd be nipping in and out all the time creating installations of stones under the kitchen table; nesting is what she called it. She says that as a little baby I just wanted to nest and create dens with things that I had found. That wasn't something that was influenced by home life per se. That was surely at that age an instinct.
Ben (43:03):
Wow. Amazing. Yeah, I think we do have that instinct to some degree in all of us. That leads me to think what are the pieces of art that you have in your own home or flat? I guess you're going to like all of them because that's why they're there. But maybe you would highlight some pieces you have or what they mean to you or perhaps what they brought to you during pandemic or out of pandemic. How you've thought about your own collecting within art for the home.
Florrie (43:35):
Well, I definitely have a philosophy which is that I never buy any art that I wouldn't want to have on my own walls. Indeed, when I buy art now, that's where it goes. But at the same time, nothing is a permanent part of my collection or home. Everything is fluid. I'm an art dealer so I buy art that I can sell and I buy art that I'll sit on for years and then sell down the line and I'll enjoy it. Then it will be time to let it go and find it a new home and bring something else in. So it's a constant state of flux.
But a painting that I recently acquired that means a lot to me is a view of Hastings where as a family we go every summer to spend time. It's by a wonderful artist called Laetitia Yhap, who is half Chinese, half Vietnamese. She has lived and worked as an artist in Hastings for the last 55 years. She does these beautiful figurative paintings often; sort of fishermen on the beach. But this is actually a view from the window of her home looking out at the cliff; a very specific cliff where I've been for long family walks. So it has resonance for me because it represents a place that is special to me and my partner and our daughter.
Ben (45:18):
Lovely. What do you look for in art or an artist then? So you have a nesting instinct piece. There's also an eye to maybe there's going to be value longer term. I guess that's the market commercial piece as well. Then there's the meaning and the symbolism and all of that. I guess it's got to speak to you. But if you are thinking to maybe represent an artist in a pop-up gallery or a piece to collect, what goes through your mind when you are looking or handling a piece of art or talking to an artist?
Florrie (45:54):
Well, again, I think a lot of it is just gut reaction and that sounds very unscientific. We all like to think that we've got good taste but it's all relative. I mean, all I can do is look for art that speaks to me and I see beauty in. I suppose because my grounding-- as you mentioned briefly-- is in old masters, I am interested in artists today who use techniques that bridge the centuries. So I am interested in art where you are looking at a painting and it's a picture of something and you can say, "Yes, that is a portrait of a person or a landscape." I do like abstract art as well. But then in something like that, it would have to be a composition that has balance and color that I like. But I'm afraid it's an entirely personal cocktail that's impossible to quantify or specify really.
Ben (47:06):
I guess that's one of the joys that it hasn't been brought to just an algorithm or something that you can count in numbers or things like that. And I guess thinking about art like that, I'm probably-- because my day job is within the market-- much more amenable to thinking about art markets and culture markets. I think artists in general, all creators are probably on average undervalued because of the way they've done it. But I think it is important to have that value. I know a lot of my arty friends have a very uncomfortable relationship with the market because they think quite rightly that a lot of the things that they produced are in some ways beyond a measurable value. Like the things we've talked about are very hard to put in words and you don't put in numbers.
There is something slightly awkward about putting a price on it. Yet in so many things human, markets are also our invention and there is this invention of being able for people to exchange in some sort of value these intangible things which are hard to count. But do you have a view-- I guess with a commercial background you are probably going to be also at least somewhat amenable to art markets having dealt with them your entire lifetime. But is there anything misunderstood about art markets or how artists should think about approaching a market or their work or something which is maybe more valued? I think it's very easy to make the argument against them just saying, "Look, these things are priceless and valuing them somehow makes it awkward.” But I think it's often less talked about of the value of markets that they can bring. And I've been just intrigued as to if you have to have any of these debates with artists and people.
Florrie (49:01):
Well, I should really say at this point that I do deal with living artists but my expertise really is in historic art. My main dealing now is with mid-20th century works of art; modern British art. So a lot of the paintings that I buy and sell are by artists who are no longer alive. I am particularly drawn to works from the 1920s, thirties, forties. I love high Art Deco design and I love what was happening in art at that time. I find the history interesting as well. So that's a market that has really blossomed and grown over the last 10, 15 years. A lot of the paintings that I deal in now are by artists who you could have bought their work 10, 15 years ago for nothing, but now you have to pay a price.
Auction houses have a really big role to play there because I think that they set the basic level at which people are prepared to spend in an art market. So there are auction records. You can look online and see what a particular artist's works might have fetched in the last year or two or even the last decade, and you can look on a website called Artnet; a kind of auction records for the last 10, 15 years on a particular artist so you can see how the market has changed or grown. That really is the litmus test.
But with contemporary art, I tend not to deal with contemporary artists who are super trendy where you are talking Gagosian level prices. That is a market I don't understand and I have no interest in. The kind of artists that I deal with today who are living, as I say, they tend to be rooted in the past. And as such, often they're kind of what I would call late career artists. People who were working in the 20th century and are still active today, but who have a kind of back catalog, so to speak, and already have a market themselves, already have a level at which they used to sell their works. Having said that, I would love to represent young emerging artists as well and students and help to guide them.
Ben (52:14):
If you have a good connection.
Florrie (52:15):
Yeah. If I think that the work is beautiful and worth pushing, I will. I have an old boss who always used to say to me, "Florrie, willing buyer, willing seller." I know that sounds a bit ridiculous, but it's true. Ultimately, all you can do is say what you think something is worth and then it will flow from there. You may have to end up in a scenario where you haggle or you reach a mutual point of agreement, but markets are fluid. But in the end, you just need someone who wants that piece of art and who's prepared to pay the price that you think it's worth.
Ben (53:04):
And why has 1920s, 1930s British art flourished and do auction houses or galleries in general? What is their role in the curation that may then actually impact value or even just the stories? I guess that's not just auction houses and galleries. That would be public galleries and national art places as well. Although again, that's probably split between contemporary and living and that. Is it just market forces of demand or is there some story as to why that art has suddenly become more noticeable? And I guess the other part I look at very afar-- So I'm interested in art, don't track the market. But it seems to me that artists or art which was perhaps historically more underrepresented, whether that's women-led art or art outside of western art or normal domains is also lifted. And you could see that as a reflection of a society movements although obviously, there's a range. So I speculate, I wonder whether that's had anything to do with it. But I'd be interested in your thoughts as to why it happens now.
Florrie (54:18):
I think that it's recent enough history that people can relate to it visually. And I think a lot of our taste today is informed by the last hundred years and what we are used to seeing, whether it's growing up with cartoons of a certain era. We are inevitably visually impacted by the aesthetics of the last century. So I think that it is natural that people look to the past to try and understand the present. That applies to art as well. But something that you say there really does strike a chord. And as you say, right now museums and public galleries are trying to rebalance their collections and to look at art and to bring women and minority groups into the history; to bring them back into the public eye. When in the past it was very much kind of white male art in galleries and museums.
I was very fortunate recently to acquire a group of works by a female artist from the 1930s who was part of the East London group of painters; a movement in East London. Her name was Brynhild Parker. She did some very sensitive, beautiful portraits of East Londoners; one of which is a young girl of Afro-Caribbean descent. She was painting what she saw every day in East London. So those are paintings for which I have aspirations. I think that they should be placed in museums and that's what I intend and hope to do because people do need to see the work of female artists and of especially the female gays in the past, they need to know it existed. They need to know that there were people looking at minority groups then in a way that we're trying to sort of look at them today.
In the past, if you went to the National Portrait Gallery you wouldn't expect to see, for instance, a portrait of a black person. Its lots of pictures of white aristocrats. I think that there's a conscious decision and it's laudable that museums and galleries are trying to kind of say, "This isn't a fair representation of our history and our country." We are a multicultural, interesting place and we have been for centuries. It's not just male artists who've been painting over the last few centuries. There were women painting as well. So I think that that's a real shift.
Ben (57:39):
And a good shift.
Florrie (57:40):
And rightly so, a good shift.
Ben (57:41):
I'm very sympathetic to that. I still think it's extraordinary that roughly half your population is still underrepresented in all walks of life and in everything that we do. Therefore, that means that society doesn't flourish as well as it could be. I'm very interested in minorities, neurodivergent, and all of that type of work. But there is, I guess-- You hear in some quarters a kind of counter argument or some sort of backlash for saying... And I guess the arguments go, "Oh, these old master works were still really great or there was that." And we have this argument, I guess, quite acutely in Britain. But you've had it in other places around statues and their role. Maybe we can reinterpret them, but should it all be put by the wayside and people feel like maybe something that they liked or they felt part of has been diminished? I don't particularly see that. I see it as raising a side which should always have been there. But what would you say to people who feel awkward or challenged by some of that older line of work perhaps being more diminished or feeling threatened by the raising of this other kind of work?
Florrie (59:05):
Oh, you said to me earlier if you had a different question...
Ben (59:10):
We can avoid it.
Florrie (59:14):
No. The thing is-- I would say to that person, "Why don't you want to discuss this?" I think that people who can't understand that there needs to be a shift in the way in which we look at society need to look at themselves.
Ben (59:36):
Yeah. I think that's fair. I really think of this still globally. Like when people saying this shift and it happens in my work domain quite a lot. And I just point out that do you think broadly speaking, the world would be a better place if we had more female power, all of these type of things? I think the answer is unequivocally yes. Obviously, there's difficulties, anything, and the nuance and challenges of actually doing that. But you can't help but to say that's true and I think it's the same in history. There's always been roughly half the population and to have it not represented just doesn't seem very true. Never know quite what the truth is, but seems very far away from the truth that we had.
Florrie (01:00:26):
Yes. And for someone to suggest that by doing this it's to the detriment of the art that we... The two have always kind of shone a light on. I mean, that's ridiculous, really. We are not going to stop looking at paintings by Monet just because we think we need to be looking at paintings by a female artist of the same era for instance.
Ben (01:01:03):
The other thing I think on that and then I'll move on is that often those artists have been really supported often by-- I guess you could call them a missing woman because we don't often know. I was reading a story about Giacometti. So he does these tall sculptures as you would know, extremely famous, very well regarded. He worked obsessively on his art for hours and hours a day, day in, day out. But if you read the story of his life, there was no way he could have done that without the women in his life. Very short, that's a very complicated domestic life he had. But it was obvious that he could not do his art without that.
There's an interesting thing actually. I'm going to pivot completely around something called music therapy or also music enablement and this idea of that we don't-- The idea of anyone creates anything and avoid is even more mythical than the other myths that we have. And that people or men throughout the centuries, the fact that they created and avoid is not true. In fact, old masters used to have-- They probably had male assistants. But they had big workshops. They had people that had helpers. In fact, you could see this maybe in Damien Hirst today. Other people, they have studios and you've always had people to work with you whether they are craft assistance or your family life and how that works. I think it's always been really interesting that it's coming to light more and more how that enablement happens. Without that enablement, you don't have the art. So I do think that is a form of co-creation which historically we've undervalued-- and we're still undervalued today, I'm sure. But we could have a slightly bigger sense of how that comes about.
Florrie (01:02:59):
That's so true. And it's also interesting, I think, that often a lot of artists' wives historically painted as well but are not as well-known as their husbands because they facilitated their husband's creativity and they tended to the family. But I've always thought you could do an exhibition called Artists Wives or Artists Two. Especially in the 20th century, there were so many artists whose wives they met at art school. In fact, a lot of women in the early 20th century went to places like the Slade to study, met their artist husbands, and then kind of went on creating but didn't have shows in the way that their husbands did because it was just understood that the male part of the relationship would be the one that was nurtured.
Ben (01:04:03):
Yes. And if they do go off by themselves, they're then often labeled difficult women.
Florrie (01:04:09):
Yeah, exactly.
Ben (01:04:10):
There's a whole other like...
Florrie (01:04:11):
Barbara Hepworth was considered to be a difficult woman because she agitated to have representation in New York and London and she expected for herself what a male artist would expect. So she was labeled a difficult woman.
Ben (01:04:30):
Is Hepworth's art now valued about the same as Henry Moore's or is there still a gap?
Florrie (01:04:36):
I would say the gap has closed.
Ben (01:04:41):
Okay. Last few bits and then we'll talk about current projects and advice for people. So very short section on underrated, overrated, or some thoughts or comments on where things might go. So one of this is NFT art. So these are non-fungible tokens or this kind of crypto art type thing. Do you think it's underrated or overrated? We had this conversation a couple of years ago so it might be quite different because that market has come down.
Florrie (01:05:10)
I have no idea. Zero idea.
Ben (01:05:13):
Let's pass. Okay. Next one would be, do you think we should have more public funding for art, or is it about right or should we have less?
Florrie (01:05:26):
We probably should have more. Always more public funding for art, especially in bleak times. We all need places to go to raise the spirits and elevate the soul.
Ben (01:05:39):
And you said you don't think it can be supported just by commercial terms on the art mark after?
Florrie (01:05:43):
No. We need more.
Ben (01:05:46):
Very fair. Then we briefly touched on this, but AI art or art generated by computers or artificial intelligence. Or at the moment what's really happening is you are using a prompt. So show me a boxer in the style of Van Gogh and then the algorithm has been trained on these sort of images and produces these type of things. Do you think underrated, overrated, or where do you think it'll go?
Florrie (01:06:16):
I think it's absolutely amazing. I know nothing about it. My brother knows a whole lot more. But something that really sticks with me is as a teenager in the nineties I remember him creating these incredible AI demos through programming. These beautiful things that would come out of incredibly complex coding and was so intriguing. I think he created one of the first codes, or if not the first code that enabled movement in time with music which was hugely innovative at the time and paved the way for AI; the fluidity of it today. I think it's fair to say he was a pioneer of that. I just have huge respect for artists who work with computers. I think that what they do is phenomenal. I say to anyone who looks down their nose at it that they have no idea the craftsmanship that goes into that. It is a type of craftsmanship and it is art, in my view.
Ben (01:07:41):
Yeah. And I hinted that this is my view on a lot of people who don't really engage with modern art or even conceptual art. I can see why it doesn't resonate with them, but I never find a case where it hasn't been extremely worked upon and thought about. You might not value that very much and everyone's got their own taste but I wouldn't necessarily just dismiss it. So thinking about collecting then, if you wanted to start out and you're interested in maybe collecting some sort of art which might be sending to you and maybe you have even just a few hundred or maybe a few thousand pounds or however, whatever budget you are. What would be your advice to a would-be person starting out thinking about collecting art?
Florrie (01:08:30):
I would say there are two things you could do. First of all, identify whether you are interested in new art or old art. If you are interested in new art, then go to degree shows, go to graduation shows for the Royal College of Art, the Slade, all these types of places and you can buy from students and support them. You can do that for not very much money and get a beautiful piece of art by an up and coming artist and that is a fantastic way to collect.
Or look at auctions. Everything's online these days. It's incredible. You can look at all sorts of things on the-saleroom.com for instance. There's another site called Invaluable and all these regional auction houses and global auction houses put their sales online with photographs of things that they have for sale. Again, you can buy things for not very much money at auction and it's quite exciting. Just think of it as a kind of glorified eBay. It's no different. If you like to kind of truffle out a bargain, that's the way to do it.
Ben (01:09:54):
Very good advice. In fact, I think I will make that on my list of things to do next year. I haven't been to a student show for quite a number of years but always really like them. I like them in design and furniture as well because I quite like the craft stuff. Okay. And then current projects and things that you are working on. So you've moved to representing potentially on pop art, pop-up gallery type things, and a little bit of collecting yourself. But any current projects you want to talk about?
Florrie (01:10:22):
Yeah. I mean, I touched on it. I'm hoping to do a pop-up exhibition on Brynhild Parker; the East London artist I mentioned who was very active in the 1930s. I have a group of her paintings so I intend to do an exhibition pop-up hopefully in the spring. So that's my main focus at the moment.
Ben (01:10:49):
Great. Would you like to end with any advice for our listeners? You could think about that as advice for artists or advice for someone who wants to take a career as a gallery person or a mudlarker, or anything you'd like to share about your life experiences so far?
Florrie (01:11:09):
Oh my gosh. I don't know that I'm the best person to give advice but I've always done what I love and it gives me great satisfaction. You can always find your people, you can always find your niche even just by going online. It's amazing how the world opens up. As long as you are doing something that you're passionate about, you should be okay. And I think it's okay to monetize your passion as well. I mean, you know I'm an art dealer. Maybe I've sold my soul, I don't know. But I mean, I don't see it that way. I just think I love art, I love dealing in it. That's how I earn my living and it gives me great pleasure.
Ben (01:12:09):
That seems like excellent advice. So Florrie Evans, thank you very much.
Florrie (01:12:14):
Thanks, Ben.
