John Wardle

Holiday at Anglesey or a great op shop buy or whatever.

And many of these things aren't expensive.

I've got so many incredible things I purchase at op shops and things.

I mean, you've both been down to Bruny Island.

Captain Kelly's Cottage is, I think, the world's largest collection of 1970s Bendigo pottery wine carafts with an individual value of no more than $20 each.

But the fact that there's 60 of them covering a wall...

You've cornered the market.

Also, there is a thing about authenticity.

As remarkable as things can be made in China nowadays, and we have things made in whole facade systems, all sorts of things made in China.

To go to an op shop 10 or 15 years ago, things were made in Stoke-on-Trent.

or Tokyo or somewhere.

Pottery from New Zealand, commercial pottery.

It's hard now for the generation of deceased estates being poured into op shops.

None of that stuff really exists anymore.

It's all mass-produced stuff from China from the 1990s.

I think to create good architecture that has something about a steeped in understanding of human experience and what causes people to feel well within a space is one of those things that's many lessons learned long and hard and over time.

Some years ago a magazine, New Luxury, wanted to do a collector's edition and they wanted to interview two collectors.

And when the young journalist came around to my studio to interview me, my first question was, what does the other guy collect?

And he said, oh, Maseratis.

And I said, okay, I just want a byline underneath John Walter.