A Home with a History: Antony and Lori Inglis Hall’s ode to objects in East Sussex

“I just love things!” Antony Inglis-Hall says, rapturously. He needn’t have told us, really. Every corner and cranny of the largely 18th-century cottage near Lewes he and his wife, Lori, rent is given over to a marvellous, manifold and mismatched miscellany. There are pottery fragments, larked from the mud of the Thames foreshore, old hats atop even older busts, and plates with painted fish. There’s a pair of extendable tongs – a Georgian invention for turning hot coals, Antony thinks – and more, more, more…

One might thing that such an amount of stuff could be suffocating, yet here it’s anything but. Sure, it’s not exactly minimalist, but there is a sense that Antony and Lori have surrounded themselves with art, antiques and objects because they really do bring something to their lives. Nothing feels extraneous and while some things are simply sentimental (Lori points out a somewhat dog-eared mechanical terrier, bought by Antony as it resembled his old pet – “except it doesn’t really. It’s just the eyes”), most have been bought out of the couple’s profound love of beauty. “And we are good at getting rid of things when we’ve got too much,” antique dealer Antony says. Lori raises her eyebrows in amusement. “Well… quite good.” He’s almost convincing. “I’m trying not to buy any more records at least.”

Both Antony and Lori ­– who works on the Lee Miller archives and the Penrose Collection at nearby Farleys House – are blessed with an artful eye, evidenced not only in the things they find but in the ways they display them. In this house, objects aren’t just there, they huddle, they throng, they nudge; they’re verbs made veridical. Antony’s own sculptures, for instance, uncanny arrangements of objets trouvés, stand sentry on shelves and ledges like some might arrange Staffordshire figurines, only daintier and infinitely more surreal. Trays are filled with more found treasures: stones, shells and seed heads, in all their alien beauty. In a room off the kitchen, a flock of model birds perched on branches convene on one wall, looking like you’ve just pressed pause on a nature documentary.

Lori’s own material obsessions are books, their serried spines lining every other corner, and textiles, namely vintage clothes, of which she has rails and rails, crammed to covetous capacity – or “just the right amount,” as she says. “I do think about what we’d do if we had to move,” Antony says, “but I suppose we’d have to be strong. Until then, I’m not convinced there’s much point in getting rid of much more,” he laughs. “I’m not sure we’d be able to make a dent.”

Lori: “We moved here in the winter of 2018, arriving at the same time as the Beast from the East. It was bone-chillingly cold. I’ll never forget the frost on the inside of the windows that February… But we’d done up old houses before, so while this needed a lot of work, we weren’t daunted. I think the landlord saw that we were capable of bringing it back to life, despite it having been empty for a while, which was why we got it.”

Antony: “It was lucky, because I’d already decided we were going to move in by the time we were halfway down the beautiful bumpy track.”

Lori: “The house really hadn’t been touched. Downstairs was painted a weird greyish green and upstairs was incredibly bright – but not nice bright. I’ve always felt that if you’ve got a lot of stuff, there’s no better background than warm white walls – they’re so clean-looking and don’t compete with the things you’re trying to display.”

Antony: “That’s not to say we don’t like colour or pattern though; it just has to be right. The green of the bathroom here, for instance, is perfect for the plaster pieces we’ve hung on it. And wallpaper can itself be the object you want to display. We’ve got a few of our friend Nick Hughes’ designs – he sells as Diddletron – in the kitchen stove’s recess and along the length of the upstairs landing. They’ve got such brilliant, graphic motifs, all printed by hand. They’re pieces of art in themselves.”

Lori: “We’ve done this house up all while having two children, which has been pretty wild. Arthur was five when we started on it, Polly was just one and had begun walking, which was perfect timing. You’d turn your back for a second and suddenly a paint pot would have been spilled on the floor…”

Antony: “It was fun. At times…”

Lori: “Now, it’s a wonderful place to have kids. They ride their bikes down the track, they play free-range in the garden. It’s wild in a different way now. Winter is still hard, but the reward of spring is exceptional. This year we had hundreds of lambs, which was magical – even if it did involve explaining what a placenta is to a small child…”

Antony: “We’re surrounded by beauty here, natural and found – and I’m always on the hunt for more. It’s my job as an antique dealer, and my life and my work definitely inform each other, which means my stands at fairs are always filled with quite interesting objects. I love the excitement of introducing people to things they may not have seen before.

“I’m generally drawn to the handmade and, like Lori, I’m really into textiles, embroidery and wool-work pieces. I love folk art too, and modernism. And everything in between! Josef Frank’s mid-century patterns particularly appeal to me – he redefined what ‘modern’ meant, showing people that it didn’t just have to be this sleek and serious thing, it could joyful and riotous, full of colour and organic forms and pattern.”

Lori: “I find great inspiration in the way Lee Miller and Roland Penrose lived at Farleys, surrounding themselves with the things they loved. Yes, they had some incredibly significant artworks, but they also had objects that brought them joy: abandoned weaver birds’ nests and shells and the like. It makes you think about the true value of things.”

Antony: “Very much so. You can buy a Keith Vaughan drawing for £18,000 and it might be nothing more than a scribble, or you can buy a painting by somebody unknown for a few hundred, which could be the best thing that artist ever made. I know which I would rather. I don’t buy things just because I think they’ll go up in value – that, to me, is missing the point. I think it’s why I love seed pods so much. As a dealer, I do have to think about the monetary value of things, whereas those natural wonders are exquisite, worth nothing and make me enormously happy. The idea of that helps me justify my habits.”

Lori: “For me, collecting is about finding a human connection – something I feel particularly strongly in clothes. I love imagining who loved them, the memories held in their fabric. I found some of Lee Miller’s clothes in the attic the other day. I’ve spent so long researching her life and, holding those dresses, which she’d worn and chosen to keep, was the first time I felt close to her as a person. That was pretty special.”

Inglis Hall Antiques on Instagram

Lori on Instagram (as The Cottage Archive)