Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic I\u2019ve mistimed my journey to Wivenhoe, Essex, and when I arrive early to meet the artists Guy Taplin, his wife Robina Jack and their daughter Nancy Rose Taplin, there is no answer at the door of their maritime cottage. But I am being watched. From a tiny window in the corrugated iron extension, a pale woman stares at me.\u00a0It\u2019s a mannequin. Robina and Nancy soon arrive, two terriers in tow, to let me in. It\u2019s a deceptively large house, jigsaw-like, with small rooms running into more small rooms as it extends away from the street. Nancy\u2019s house backs on to it, with the boundary removed so their gardens are merged.\u00a0Immediately it\u2019s clear that the mannequin was just a glimpse of what\u2019s inside: a palimpsest of 44 years of collecting \u2014 mostly by Guy \u2014 curated with mischievous humour. It\u2019s tricky to even get inside, because a Syrian mosaic of a horse from the late Roman era (supposedly \u2014 \u201capparently they faked these,\u201d says Guy) is leaning against the wall of the narrow hallway. \u201cI swapped it for 20 penguins,\u201d he says.\u00a0Born in 1939 in east London, Guy creates sculptures of birds inspired by local coastal species, carved mostly from driftwood and other found timber. His work has been shown at the Tate, the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe Hambourg and Washington State University. The late sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink was a particular admirer of his style and owned a number of pieces.\u00a0Robina creates ceramics featuring colourful menageries. She\u2019s a favourite of interior designer Kit Kemp \u2014 who has created a wallpaper featuring her work \u2014 and her plates and platters are on display at projects including Ham Yard Hotel. Nancy is a printmaker and painter, working with found materials. Like their interlinked home life, all three are represented by the London St James\u2019s gallery Messum\u2019s; Nancy is currently in a group show, and a solo show by Guy opens next month.\u00a0I\u2019m led past the little sitting room at the front of the house. It has a low-lit, Victorian feel, with chintz wallpaper and green panelling. Every space is full of maritime antiques \u2014 stuffed birds, model ships, the bill of a sawfish painted with a landscape. Behind the armchair, low to the ground, are huge punt guns once mounted to boats and used to kill waterfowl.The sun streams in through the kitchen\u2019s large window, illuminating the pale blue walls. There\u2019s a niche full of family photos; the units came from Robina\u2019s grandmother, and date to 1875. \u201cI like primitive things,\u201d says Guy; he wouldn\u2019t want a new kitchen. An antique narwhal tusk (\u201cThey\u2019re not quite illegal, not yet\u201d) is strung up above a door that hides the narrow staircase.\u00a0All around are more curios. Beyond a bulky weather-worn figurehead from a ship, carved boats \u2014 traditional votive objects hung in churches in Cornwall and Brittany \u2014 dangle from the low ceiling in the dining area. What appears to be a handmade ceramic cat litter scoop is flanked by golden sconces. Anybody using the toilet must contemplate a child-sized carving of Christ on the cross. A handle next to steps into a bedroom is fashioned from a painted oar. Outside, one of the many sheds is guarded by fibreglass caryatids.\u00a0Last are the birds \u2014 stuffed, carved, painted \u2014 everywhere. Around 150 are wooden decoys, mostly late-19th century \u2014 from Maine, Prince Edward Island and California, among other places across North America \u2014 mingling with Guy\u2019s own pieces. \u201cI\u2019ve got a certain obsessive nature,\u201d he says.The family\u2019s work is united by avian motifs. Guy and Robina met while they were working in Regent\u2019s Park in the 1970s: Robina was a gardener, Guy was a \u201cbird man\u201d, looking after the birds on the lake. He first encountered the wooden decoys that prompted his career at an antiques market at nearby Camden Lock.\u00a0His studio adjoins the house, full of incomplete sculptures jumbled with mannequins and other oddities. He pulls out a dusty plastic shopping bag when I manage to clamber up the steep, sawdust-strewn stairs, and shows me a replica Colt Walker pistol. He did national service for two years in Cyprus, 1958-60, he tells me. \u201cThat was really horrible,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then they stopped national service. He was one of the last,\u201d adds Robina. \u201cHe\u2019s probably why they stopped it,\u201d says Nancy.Robina creates her brightly patterned painted pieces in the garden sheds, where she has a small kiln. She used to make stained glass: her work is embedded throughout the home; the front door is topped with a glass depiction of Maggie, the old family dog.\u00a0Nancy works in the attic of her house, a calm and cosy space with pale walls that she shares with her five-year-old daughter. Antiques and pictures here are curated with comparative restraint; the kitchen tiles were made by Robina. Her desk overlooks her parents\u2019 garden and their studios. \u201cYou check on our work!\u201d says Robina. \u00a0The birds live this transitory life. They don\u2019t have any emotional baggage, which we carry heavilyThey\u2019re entertaining company, full of camaraderie, their lives like the intersecting parts of the house \u2014 distinct but connected. One of the dogs, Nora, is Nancy\u2019s but the households are so intermingled that you wouldn\u2019t know which belongs to who.\u00a0When Nancy moved in with her then two-year-old daughter in 2021, to the home where her grandfather had lived after the death of his wife, it upended her parents\u2019 lives. \u201cWe basically wrought complete mayhem,\u201d she says. \u201cShe\u2019s quite a force,\u201d adds Robina. But today they\u2019ve settled into a rhythm, eating, shopping, walking the dogs and doing the school run together. She had grown up in Wivenhoe, and missed it. \u201cI would sit and meditate; I\u2019d walk the whole river in my mind.\u201d\u00a0Today, while they drop in to see each other throughout the day, their work places are kept separate. Despite this, says Nancy, \u201cthere\u2019s quite a lot of conversation between Dad\u2019s and my work\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. We\u2019re in a rhythm, working together.\u201d She believes the themes in their work have converged \u2014 and they\u2019ve become so much closer to each other.\u201cI never think of myself as an artist. I just, you know, make these wooden birds,\u201d says Guy. \u201cEverything was coincidental,\u201d he adds, of his success. \u201cThere was no rationale behind it.\u201d Visitors to Regent\u2019s Park first convinced him to part with his decoy-inspired sculptures; soon he was selling the aged-looking birds into the antiques trade. He was taken up by a gallery, \u201cby accident\u201d, he says; it put on a solo show and sold everything. \u201cI come from a working-class background so I had no experience of that world at all\u201d. Now his pieces can be found in the Royal Collection and the homes of actor and author Michael Palin and the Guinness family.The move to Wivenhoe was, again, \u201ccoincidental\u201d, says Guy. Property just happened to be cheap. He initially moved here with friends, but shortly after marrying Robina in 1979 they bought their current home. It was \u00a311,000; \u201che couldn\u2019t believe his luck,\u201d she says.\u00a0Located on the River Colne before it widens into an estuary, the town was the last place that boats could squeeze into before the river reaches Colchester, and was built on the industries of shipbuilding and fishing. It\u2019s \u201cfull of energy, it attracts all oddballs and all the rest of it\u201d, says Guy \u2014 Francis Bacon was a neighbour when they arrived. It was, he says \u201ca refuge for a lot of people\u201d.\u00a0Unoccupied for seven years and last redecorated before the war, the house had \u201cno basins. There was a pump. But the pump wasn\u2019t connected to anything,\u201d says Robina. It even had gas lamps. \u201cNothing had been touched,\u201d says Guy. \u201cIt was wonderful.\u201d Today, little has changed in terms of structure beyond a modest extension. The wood panelling throughout is original.\u00a0Nancy was a baby at the time. So what was it like growing up in Wivenhoe? The last shipyard closed in the early 1980s so, along with the woods and river, \u201cthere were these enormous industrial wastelands that were really fun to play in\u201d, says Nancy. \u201cDeeply dangerous,\u201d adds Robina. Nancy and her brother Sam used to spend a lot of time in their father\u2019s studio on the beach, sleeping on rickety metal bunk beds and hearing curlews calling in the evening. She recalls coming in \u201chead-to-toe in mud. We\u2019d just roll in it.\u201dShe tries to remind herself of these memories when raising her daughter, who is \u201cnotorious for lying down in puddles\u201d, she says. \u201cI think we\u2019ve sanitised our lives so much.\u201dHer brother Sam was a sculptor, carving fish and birds. He died in 2012 and his work hangs throughout the house. \u201cSam\u2019s death tied us,\u201d says Guy. \u201cThat was part of the journey. It\u2019s never a straight road.\u201dNancy claims to have become \u201can artist by mistake. I spent most of my life trying not to be an artist. It got me in the end.\u201d After abandoning her PhD in art history at the Courtauld, her family, without her knowledge, signed her up to be included in a group show of their work. That was 2010.\u201cI always thought I\u2019d be a potter,\u201d says Robina, conversely. But it was only 15 years ago that she rediscovered the medium. \u201cIn the end you get there.\u201dWhile the birds in Robina and Nancy\u2019s work are from all over the world, Guy depicts shore birds. \u201cThey live this, to us, transitory life,\u201d he says. \u201cThey don\u2019t have any emotional baggage, which we carry heavily\u201d.\u00a0The home is both inspiration for, and encapsulation of this intergenerational shared taste. \u201cIt\u2019s an enormous resting place for so many objects that are just perfect in their own way, and often that\u2019s very imperfect,\u201d says Nancy.\u00a0It\u2019s their \u201ctarnish and patina\u201d that resonates, says Guy. \u201cThey reflect your unconscious.\u201d\u00a0\u201cModern Romantics\u201d (featuring Nancy Rose Taplin), until January 31; \u201cGuy Taplin 2025\u201d, February 5-28, both at David Messum Fine Art, London; messums.comFind out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic I\u2019ve mistimed my journey to Wivenhoe, Essex, and when I arrive early to meet the artists Guy Taplin, his wife Robina Jack and their daughter Nancy Rose Taplin, there is no answer at the door of their maritime cottage. But I am being watched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":167892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-167891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167893,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167891\/revisions\/167893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}