Collecting at Robert Kime

Robert's mix and his approach to collecting has always stemmed from his philosophy, "buy what you love".

"Buy what you love, what interests you. Put something modest next to something quite grand" -RK

"They will help each other to be more interesting. I have been asked so many times and I do it so naturally; buy things, collect them, that it is hard to distill it into a philosophy or even describe how I do it. I find it very satisfying to do, to collect things - because if I am interested or becoming interested in something, I start to learn about it, then I might begin to collect it. If you walk around my shop on Ebury Street, you'll see the things I like, that I bought and I would have any of them at home. I'd 'collect' any of it. I suppose I have, just in this case, it is for other people. So they can start or add to their own collections."

"My favourite pieces have a point. Edward Lear paintings- his work in Egypt has a point. Amazing. He's just got it. The Nile, the quietness, all of it. But I don't think that about his work in Italy, for example, so I collect his work from Egypt. The chair at my desk is a nice, honest 18th Century chair. It also happens to have been Wordsworth's chair. I don't value it just because of that, but it makes it interesting the think of the life of a piece. I certainly don't have a particular interest in having everything in the same period. You have to mix it up."

"In my own flat, I have things around me that I bought 60 years ago and other things that I bought last week. My tastes haven't changed at all and I am not interested in just collecting something for the sake of collecting. Everything says something to me, I suppose, and sits well based on livability and comfort."

"Collecting? You see something you haven't seen before, and you just have a thirst for it."

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