Visiting Miles Kielar and Will Hunter in their east London flat is like being given access to a small but fascinating museum of global art and design. To ask about its wildly varied contents – and you would have to be sorely lacking in curiosity not to – is to find yourself agog as its curators animatedly tell the story that lies behind each peculiar piece. Who knew that an ancient Egyptian anal plug, used during the process of embalming, could be a thing of such tactile beauty? Have you ever heard of the feminist Impressionist/Symbolist painter, Clémentine-Hélène Dufau, who had a nervous collapse after falling in love with the gay teenage son of her greatest patron? Might you have guessed that the fragment of pillar on the kitchen counter is centuries older than its decorative inlays of Renaissance Cosmati marble? Would you have recognised the ‘typically Ligurian’ feet on the 18th-century Piedmontese mirror that hangs between the windows? Do you know what the function of a wussus is? No? Nor me.
The flat itself is ordinary – part of the first floor of an early Victorian terraced house in a short surviving segment of residential road, the rest of which was flattened by bombs in World War II. Even the houses left standing were gutted by fire, leaving not so much as an original cornice, let alone a staircase. The pavement front door opens on to a narrow slot of steep stairs, leading up to a squeeze of a landing and the plain, plywood entrance to the flat. This door opens on to a dark, narrow corridor. To the right is the combined kitchen and living room, diagonally opposite is a small, single bedroom, to the left a small bathroom, and at the back a bedroom just big enough for a double bed and a wardrobe. Multi-pane sash windows are the only nod to the building’s architectural history.
Into this unassuming shell have been poured two lifetimes’ worth of knowledge and appreciation, both of antiques and of contemporary design – albeit two relatively short lifetimes. Miles is only 30, but has been buying and selling antiques since his childhood in Tasmania. Will is ten years older and always knew he wanted to be an architect – he studied the subject at University College London and the Royal College of Art, before changing direction in favour of journalism and becoming editor of the Architectural Review. In 2015, he founded the London School of Architecture; more recently, he has been a fellow at Harvard, and subsequently at MIT. His current plan is to write a book about city entrepreneurs. ‘Nothing in the world of architecture or design is possible without funding,’ he says, by way of explaining this impressive, if slightly bewildering, career path.
When Will and Miles met five years ago, they ‘got on like a house on fire’ instantly. ‘I love contemporary design, but it felt as though, without even knowing it, I had always been looking for a partner who loved antiquities,’ says Will. The flat belonged to him – Miles had been living in the spare room of a friend’s flat in Marylebone. He remembers visiting it for the first time and being impressed by how ‘curated’ its contents were. ‘Everything was there for a reason,’ Miles says, ‘every piece made or painted by a friend.’ The glowing yellow microcement bathroom was created by Tom Leahy and Eleanor Hill, who founded the architectural studio Parti; they were at the RCA with Will. Even the sofa is a one-off, made to Will’s design.
Before he moved in permanently, Miles started bringing antiques he had bought to show them to Will, and then leaving them. ‘My possessions are a bit of a moving feast,’ Miles says with a laugh. ‘I often keep things for a while before selling them, partly because I like to research them so thoroughly, but also to enjoy them.’ The deposited objects looked surprisingly at home. ‘It turns out we have practically the same aesthetic,’ says Will. ‘Our interests intersect and cross over – we are both very visual. And I like the way objects come and go too – meaning the furnishings of the flat is never really finished. Something new arrives, and everything has to move around to accommodate it, like a 3D decorating game.’ There are a few possessions that will stay firmly in place; the sofa for a start, and the gorgeous 18th-century Piedmontese mirror grounded on its typically Ligurian feet. ‘It was the second piece we bought together,’ says Miles, ‘as an upgrade to replace a gilded and painted reproduction mirror. We found it at auction, and it fits perfectly between the front windows.’ Also likely to be a keeper is the rough chunk of rock that sits on the living room sideboard. It’s a Sarsen stone from the Dorset garden of fellow antique dealer Ken Bolan, and was the biggest fragment Miles and his friend, photographer Freddie Ardley, could carry. ‘I have always collected things made of stone,’ says Miles. ‘I like to think this might once have formed part of an ancient stone circle.’
Bought in the pandemic, the luscious painting by Dufau that fills the wall over the sofas is also safe, at least for the moment, and not just for the way it fortuitously ties together the room’s palette, perfectly complementing the mustard-velvet upholstery and the sideboard with its cricket-club-tie stripes of red, green and black. ‘She was a remarkable woman,’ says Miles. ‘And one of only two female artists to have been awarded the Legion of Honour. I have a bit more research to do. A couple of paintings have surfaced recently that have made me think the reclining figure in the painting may be a self-portrait, and the main male figure her son.’
And, just in case you’re still wondering, a wussus is a pestle for pounding root vegetables, carved from petrified coral and peculiar to the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific. The protuberances on the top represent nipples. Miles and Will have a particularly fine example sitting on their kitchen table.
