TWO POEMS, ONE STEP REMOVED

Launching the instagram page "Two Poems" in 2021, Ziff channelled his keen eye, turning it away from the nuanced stories he captures in his work as a photographer and towards one of his great passions - post-war modernism. Infatuated with objects, ceramics, paintings and sculpture, Ziff's penchant for collecting overflowed into an obsession, one that found beauty in objects that celebrated natural materials, the human touch and an instantaneous charm. Establishing his showroom in London Fields as both a means to store his collection and sell the veritable profusion of pieces, Ziff has found himself at an intermediary point, somewhere between curator, antique dealer, collector, and above all, appreciator.

Collating a meditative curatorial practice and a connected, deep-rooted aesthetic property within its outlook, Two Poems' anachronistic point of view celebrates the unusual, the charming and the unknown. With a focus on natural materials combined with purposeful man-made elements, Ziff highlights pieces by known practitioners and folk artists, enshrining the work in a warm glow of reverence and mutual appreciation between collector and maker.

Delving into Two Poems’ curatorial practice, UrlfreezeShops took a trip to Ziff's East London showroom, discussing the appeal of 20th Century design and the joy of merging the natural and the man-made.

With my background as a photographer and my love for film, I realised that my favourite films were more poetic, films that cared a great deal about the mise-en-scène. From there I started to look at set designers and the objects within scenes. The films that I cared the most about, although they may have dealt with depressing and dark subjects, were beautiful in terms of look, set design, and camera movement. Naturally, that interest extended into the world of art, ceramics, and sculpture as well as film. It was almost overnight that I became obsessed with British pottery and began to read books and old magazines about it. I very quickly learned what my taste was, just like with music or films. You might not know why, but certain kinds of music will really connect with you. For me, it was this kind of aesthetic world that appealed to me.

It was instinctual, you really feel when want to buy something - it’s quality not quantity. Sometimes you’ll buy something that you don’t love, but you know will sell. But I try, 95% of the time, to buy things that I would love to have in my own house. Sometimes you’ve got to have your business head on – I didn’t set out to create a business, but it just naturally happened because I was buying items that I loved, which then resonated with people because if you love it, someone else out there will also love it. The slowest things to sell are the things that I’ve bought that I didn’t personally love. I always tell people who come here, that whatever they’re drawn to is what they should think about purchasing, rather than buying something because it has a certain market value. If you think it’s beautiful, and you want it in your house, then that is all that matters.

That was the difficult thing when I started, as I didn’t know whether I was an art dealer or an antique dealer or a curator or a collector. But I think that the best way to describe it is curation. I’ll go to a market and there’s an overload of objects from different eras, in different styles, and I’m picking out those two pieces out of 10,000 pieces from all of these different sellers. In essence, it is curating a selection of objects that I love.

When I had the spur of the moment idea to start the Instagram account, I knew I didn’t want to call it T. Ziff or Toby Ziff or anything like that. I wanted it to be an anonymous name. I love poetry and the Paris Review – which is a long-term, somewhat snobby, but great literary and poetry magazine that has been published since the ‘50s. Every issue, they feature new poets and two of their poems, titled “Two Poems by…” There was no thought to it really, it was just a name that stuck with me. You build a brand and a look that suddenly clicks with time – “oh, it’s Two Poems”.

Ultimately, it’s the feel of it not the think of it – it’s the way an object makes me feel initially, it’s an emotional reaction. Then secondarily, it’s looking at its form, its materials etc. There are certain materials that I am drawn to – I love stone, ceramic, metal. I hate the term, but I like “sculptural” things. Items that have a certain form to them, a form that gives presence. It’s like a breath of fresh air to me. I have a tendency towards objects that are really clean and clear and avoid having a certain fussiness to them. Tactile objects – things that should be picked up and felt, as opposed to more traditional pieces. Nothing in here is a bust of an old man that looks like an old man, everything has to be one step removed. For example, this piece is a torso, but it’s not obviously a torso. It’s open to that interpretation – it’s a much more interesting approach than simply having an object that reflects what it represents so obviously. It all stems from the other art that I like – ambient music, poetic cinema – I love things that aren’t instantly obvious. If you’re an amazingly skilled painter, why bother painting a photorealistic painting of a famous person? There’s no denying that there is incredible skill and talent there, but what is the point? Just take a photograph. I’ve always enjoyed art that is one step removed.

Most of the work that I collect, and curate would be put in the category of post-war modernism. The reason that that art came to be was because there had recently been two world wars, the world was in a terrible, depressing time but everyone was rebuilding it. Post-war, we had this amazing flurry of objects and art that were beautiful for the sake of being beautiful. Someone may come in here and ask “can that vase be used?” and the answer is obviously no. I don’t give a shit about functionality in any sense, and that was the same approach they had back in the post-war time. Would you put a plant in that massive pot with the smoke-fired stripes? [gestures to a large stone pot] Absolutely fucking not. And that’s absolutely fine – it can just be an object that is made to be beautiful. This kind of modernist art, ceramics and sculpture that flourished post-war was a reaction to the world rebuilding. It was making art and objects that occupied space in your house that were beautiful. You don’t need to interpret them or prescribe meaning to them, they aren’t conceptual art, with political statements. They’re beautiful for being beautiful, and for me, that’s enough. I also love work that is made by folk artists or artists who are clearly not trained artists who went to art school, they’re a bit…shit, but in a good way! A bit rough and raw – but there is an innocence to that, because the artists were making it just because they wanted to make something and were not thinking about being in a gallery.

It’s always a funny one, regarding un-named or unsigned work, because on the one hand, you want to tell people who the work was by and how it was made, but also there are a few famous potters who don’t sign their work. Richard Batterham, who unfortunately passed away last year, was an absolute master potter whose work now goes for silly money at auction – he didn’t sign any of his pieces. He never did. His argument was that signing it was a mark of ego. To keep everything as genuine as possible, he didn’t sign his work. I kind of sit somewhere in the middle of this, in terms of opinion. I think you probably should sign your work, because in the age of Ikea and MADE, a signature is a signifier that something was made by hand, by a person, not a machine.

As with everything I buy and sell, if I sell it, I will never find another version of it. It’s not an edition print, it’s not a contemporary line of design from a shop. Everything here is pretty much 1 of 1, and a lot of it is anonymous. From my point of view, that’s part of the charm, because the people that are buying from me are not buying because it has a name on it, they’re buying purely because they like the object. They aren’t coming here to make investments, they are coming because they want to buy something beautiful and it doesn’t matter that there isn’t a name on it. They aren’t thinking about resale and auction prices. I occasionally get lucky because of the research that I do into pottery, and I identify a vase or a ceramic piece that the auction house didn’t, and I manage to attribute it and get it for a very good price because the name isn’t in the catalog. The pot that we were talking about before, I knew as soon as I saw it that it was a piece by Jane Perryman, who was a leading ceramicist in smoke-firing, which creates that amazing pattern. If that goes into auction with the name on, it’ll be a thousand pounds – I bought it for eighty because no one had realised. It’s the same with this teapot that went up the other day, I saw the spout peeping out and I knew straight away that it was made by Patrick Horsley, whose work I had seen before. If I know the name, I’ll always say it, but I love the idea of having anonymous works, because people are purchasing items because they like it, rather than thinking about its value as an investment beyond that initial emotional value.

When you look around here, pretty much everything is a natural material. A lot of pieces are ceramic and beauty of ceramic is that it’s earth, wind and fire. Mud from the ground that becomes clay, you add water to the clay, then you put it in the kiln and add fire. A lot of people that do this, and collect, are people with empathy – they’re usually drawn to objects because of that. It’s hard to rationalise it, but I am attracted to natural materials as opposed to man made materials. It reflects time and has a character to it – I don’t really care about the condition of an item, for example. If the vase has a break in it and it has been really badly glued back together – for me it adds value! It has that extra charm to it, but from an art world perspective it’s ruined and de-valued. It gives things a character and life that a piece of mass made furniture or a vase that has been made in a factory just doesn’t have.

It does exactly that. All of these pieces have been made by someone’s hand, with time. That time and practice resonates in the object. When you touch a machine-made ceramic piece, and feel it in your hand, its all tinny – it’s completely soulless. Look at the charm of this mug, that is painted with a turtle. It’s so badly done, but it’s amazing! Obviously from an art point of view, it’s a rubbish turtle, but that’s what makes it so good. It has an innocence to it. I love items that have an element of fun to them – these flat form mugs are amazing. Can they be used as mugs? No. Can they be used as vases? Not really. But they’re great 2D handmade objects. It’s always that connection, that it has been made by someone’s hand, that resonates in the soul of the object. If you collect vintage tees or ‘90s Stone Island, and it’s a bit dirty and the fabric is wearing away – that is the same thing. It has charm and spirit. My everyday shoes are these Nike Internationalist sneakers from 1999 – they’re so battered, ripped and torn, with no tread anymore – I can’t throw them away because I love the fact that they are battered and tell a story. Like Tom Sachs’ own Mars Yards that are completely destroyed – he hates the idea of people buying them and not wearing them. It has so much more charm when compared to what it looked like when it was originally bought. It has a poetry to it. Coming back to ambient music, it’s the feel of things, not the think of it. Isn’t it amazing that ambient music can make you feel so much without a single lyric or word? It’s 100% feeling and emotion, but you’ve got to meet it halfway. You’ve got to listen to that 25-minute track but give it a chance – it can be way more profound than something that comes to you easily. Similarly, if you’re watching a film with an ambiguous ending, a lot of people don’t like it because they want closure. But those people who meet it halfway and like that mystery connect in a much more interesting way that a more mainstream film that tells you what it’s about doesn’t. This goes back to objects, I don’t buy things thinking about how many people will like it – if I absolutely love it, then someone else out there will absolutely love it too.

It’s hard to choose one, because there are so many, but was probably this beautiful large raku sculpture. It was just so well balanced – with these two massive pieces of stoneware. It was such a calming sculpture that has this beautiful grace to it. I sold it to an interior designer, so it’s probably in some oligarch’s house now.