343: Why Beauty Matters in the Climate Crisis
At a moment when the world feels noisier than ever, what role can beauty play in helping us reconnect to what really matters?
About this episode
At a moment when the world feels noisier, faster, and more demanding than ever, what role can beauty play in helping us slow down, reconnect, and remember what matters?
As the year draws to a close, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson step back from targets, timelines and political headwinds to explore how craft, design and the quiet appreciation for our objects and spaces can shape both the worlds we live in, and the futures we are trying to build.
Tom is joined in Bath by designer and artist Patrick Williams, founder of the design studio and workshop Berdoulat, whose work is rooted in traditional craft, natural materials and a deep sensitivity to place. Together they reflect on what happens when efficiency crowds out care, when buildings and objects lose their connection to human bodies and natural rhythms, and why the climate crisis may also be a crisis of beauty.
As we reflect on a challenging year for climate action, we also offer an invitation for the days ahead: to slow down, to notice what restores us, and to remember that meaningful change is sustained not just by effort, but by care, beauty and joy.
Learn more:
📖 Find out more about Patrick’s upcoming book release, The House Rules
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Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
Full Transcript
Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.
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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.
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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Today, we bring you a special episode on what the role of beauty, craft, and paying attention is in our modern world. Thanks for being here. Okay, friends, so this is coming out on the 24th of December. So that is a period of the year where people sometimes take some time off. So this episode is going to be less about what Outrage and Optimism is sometimes about, which is the problems of the world, the targets, the challenges, how we're trying to deal with them. And it's going to be a bit more reflective and give everybody an opportunity to step back a bit, think about the world we're in and the world we've created. We're recording this on the 16th of December, so about eight days before you're hearing it, which is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, which I don't think is any way that either of you thought I was going to start. I'm sitting here in Bath, England, which is where she wrote many of her books. Actually, that's not a bad beginning for an episode that tries to cut a middle line between remembering the pace of a world that maybe has passed away as we try and create a world that takes the best of that and the one we have today to move us into the future. We'll get into all those things, but what would you both like to say to start us off?
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Christiana Figueres: Well, I would like to say, Tom, kudos to you for this interview that listeners are going to really enjoy after we get out of their way.
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Paul Dickinson: No chance of that. I had a lot to say before the interview.
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Christiana Figueres: After we stop, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it is certainly a time of the year to turn our attention to beauty, and one would hope that it's not only now. Because beauty, awe, wonder, all of that family of emotions are so important for us to pause our craziness, our rat race of every day. And truly make time for the sunset, make time for a piece of music, make time to appreciate a child's laugh, that even a child that we don't know. Just pause a minute. Because when we pause for that, to appreciate a gorgeous tree and, you know, feel the awe and wonder of nature, or of other human beings, or sometimes even of ourselves. It is such a beautiful moment to remember that life is really larger than all our to-do lists, and our fears, and our anxieties. And it is an invitation to re-center on being, as opposed to just doing. One of my favorite challenges in life. Me, my multitasking, me with endless, endless to-do lists. And also, at the same time as my to-do lists get longer and longer, reminding myself how important it is for our nervous system, for our mental health, for the happiness that we can feel, for our joy. How important it is to stop, pause, and really appreciate beauty, not just for its endemic characteristics, but for what it does for us.
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Paul Dickinson: I couldn't agree with you more, Christiana, that the prism, I would say, of aesthetics is a kind of critical part of understanding. And for fun, it may be a little bit provocatively. 25 years ago, I wrote this book called Beautiful Corporations. And some people would see it was an ironic title, because corporations are associated with kind of mass consumption and all the rest of it. But to me, it was more like a challenge. And I think I was actually wanted to ask you a question, Tom. You've been a craftsperson. Yeah, I wondered if you made some kind of connection to another you when you went through the process of bringing Patrick in this excellent interview to us.
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Christiana Figueres: Nice question. Nice question, Tom.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: It's a very good question. I mean, I think so years ago when I finished my time as a monastic, I decided that I wanted to spend my life doing craft, because I felt it was really important to connect the mind and the body together. And also, I was aware even then, having had various different jobs, that there is a dehumanizing element of the efficiency that is required of us to operate in the world. We're all expected to be effective, to be efficient, and that takes us out of the pace that I sometimes feel is more natural. If you're building a, you know, I used to build chairs, so I would fell the trees, I would split the wood with an ax, I would use a knife to shape all the pieces, and the smell of the wood, and you know, the physicality of it, and the production of something at the end, really tied me in to the place I was. I remember hearing this quote from a craftsman that had heard it from his teacher, and he said, the point of crafting tools, and you know, it's this old style language, is to tie an Englishman close and ever closer to England, which is this kind of love of place and connection, which I really believed and believe that that's really important. Actually, my mental health when I was doing that was really good. And I think it's been hard over the years to do jobs that are, which many of us do, all of us do, that are disconnected from us in terms of the impact that's in another place. And I think part of that is what I wanted to talk to Patrick about. The other part of it also is another sort of issue that I've been feeling my way into over the years, which is I think the sustainability crisis is also a crisis of beauty. If you go to many parts of the world, the speed and the efficiency that we have to engage in to build our world, to provide for the people on this planet something we should applaud, necessitates an efficiency that means that much of our built environment and our world looks quite ugly, actually. And many of the things that we reflect on really loving are older buildings or things like that. And if you read, as I did when I did my masters, many of these sort of like philosophies of that, there's something called the Fibonacci sequence, which is this 12th century mathematician who looked at what's called the golden mean, the mathematical relationship around how things grow in nature. There's a common principle between, and Patrick talks about this, the growth of a fern and the pine cone and a galaxy. And that is reflected in some architecture. And if you go back to Plato, what he would have said is that this principle draws you to a higher mental state and being surrounded by beauty will take you out of the sort of dehumanizing efficiency of your day-to-day life and in his language, bring you closer to God. So I'll introduce Patrick in a minute. Anything else either of you want to say before I go to come to Patrick?
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Paul Dickinson: Just that phrase about architecture, we make the buildings and then after that, the buildings make us. So there's a relationship, right?
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And we live in a world we can't fully disconnect from. We need to live our own time and live in the world we're in, but that could be hard.
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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, that's beautiful, Tom, how you gave us that context, especially at this time of the year when there's so much decoration that is put everywhere. I think it's really important to separate. Beauty is not decoration, right? It is fundamentally something much, much deeper. It, as you have said, it brings us to a deeper sense of orientation within ourselves, of connection, in fact, even of energy and joy and agency. And somehow, we've almost swallowed the myth that beauty is not important. Yeah. That we don't have time for it, that it's not necessary. As long as we're expedient, efficient, effective, you know, all of those, then beauty is inconsequential. And that is so not true. So not true. So yeah. So thank you for reminding us of all of that, Tom.
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Paul Dickinson: And as you take us to Patrick, I want to remind you of something I, well, not remind you. I want to tell you something. I did some research up at Fintorm. This amazing person, India Brown, and she said, I said, what's the Fintorm experience? And she said, and she's being metaphorical. She said, you come here, you take off your shoes and you step back into something much older and much more familiar, she said, and that was really beautiful.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. I really like what you both said. And I think, Christiana, the point you made about beauty is not decoration. Actually, what it points to is not making things look pretty. It actually presents a sense of spaciousness into which we can actually live our lives. Rather than the more and more, we're always pouring more and more things into our lives. But when you are able to experience nature or something like architecture or craft that's had a lot of attention, it creates a quietness and a space that actually enables you to experience something. In many ways, what we're facing in the world is a crisis of noisiness. And we're running more efficient. Yeah, too much.
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Christiana Figueres: Too much, too much stuff. Actually, one of the most beautiful things in my life is an empty table with nothing on it.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: There you go.
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Christiana Figueres: And it is so calming when you walk by and it's like just an empty table.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
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Christiana Figueres: It is so calming because it makes space for other things that are not, you know, ricky racks that we put on tables.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So coming to Patrick, Patrick Williams is a friend and he is the founder of something called Berdoulat, which is like a design agency and also a shop here in Bath. He has been doing this for 20 years. He's a fine artist by training. And I've sort of seen Patrick working a little bit up close and the world of interior design can be a lot about show and sort of like ostentatiousness. But Patrick is completely different to that. He is deeply intuitive and deeply reflective of the environment he's in. And when I've seen him go into an environment and think, his approach tends to be what is trying to emerge in this place. And he does it with this real sense of like, how do you use color and space to have a combination of history and the future and the end result is kind of magical because it produces something that brings a spaciousness to it. And he does it with this remarkable sense of feeling his way into it. So I've been really moved actually by watching him work and seeing how he does that, which made me really want to have this conversation with him because as you'll hear, we talk a bit about design, but we talk a lot about philosophy and approaches to the world. So we get into that sort of thing. So let's go into, at the beginning, I also set up the fact that he's just written a book, and I would really encourage everyone to buy this book because it's beautiful. So the links are in the show notes and I cover that off at the beginning. So here's Patrick Williams. Patrick, it's so good to see you. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): It's a huge pleasure.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Well, it's a wonderful time to be sort of stepping back and having this conversation. Now, before we start, I should point out that we have here a copy of your remarkable new book called The House Rules, which is available not yet, right? When is it actually coming out?
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Well, you can pre-order it everywhere, including the Berdoulat website, but it's published in the UK on the 5th of March, and I think elsewhere slightly later on in March.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay. And you kindly sent me a copy of this online, so I've been reading it. And one of the things that really made me want to speak to you is the way in which you blend incredibly beautiful photographs with a sort of philosophy and an approach. So I really recommend this book to everybody. The links are in the show notes. Go and have a look at it. So with that bit out of the way, because I wanted to say that, I'd love to start off by asking you actually to read a little bit. And there was a passage in the book that I absolutely loved, that I would call the Georgian sash window potato waffle. So maybe we could start with that.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yes, by all means, by all means. It's actually, I think, pretty much the opening paragraph of the book. These sash windows are delicious, remarked our four-year-old as she tucked into bird's eye potato waffles for the first time. Much to the chagrin of my wife Neri, who had carefully weaned her off breast milk with an array of healthy and delicious foods, I'd treated our daughter to something I'd been denied as a child by equally foodie parents. No doubt this remark and the resulting proud father moment was an inevitable consequence of our child having lived her whole life in Bath, where one is drenched in Georgian architecture to the point of saturation. It got me thinking that while the old adage, you are what you eat is true, one's visual diet is also hugely important. There is a reason why the golden ratio, the mathematical proportion of roughly 1 to 6, deemed to denote aesthetic harmony, feels right, and why an 18th-century sash window and its grid of pain set within a beautifully proportioned facade is pleasing first to the eye, and then to the body when one is inside the building. As Leonardo da Vinci depicted in his Vitruvian Man, all relate to the human form. Ditto in nature, where from pine cones to galaxies, we humans find inner happiness, delight and wonder in the perfectly proportioned spirals that plot Fibonacci's sequence of numbers.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Beautiful, beautiful. So thank you for reading that, and that's an amazing beginning to your book. I wanted you to read that because I think as we get a chance to sort of think a little bit about at the end of the year about how we're doing on sustainability and climate, we often get immersed in the numbers and the policies and the details and what's happening. But one of the things I've been aware of through knowing you and through reading your book and other things is this is as much a kind of crisis of beauty in our surroundings. We're surrendering what would have once been the world that we would have created, made so carefully by craftspeople made by hand, to something that is mass produced, that's made far away, that's disconnected from us. And that feels to me very linked in a way that I can't quite put my finger on to the deeper crises that we're experiencing with nature and with our world. So I'd love to just start with a very broad question to invite you to speak about that, that relationship between beauty and the situation we're in right now in the world.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Well, it's something I think about the whole time. I think when it really came to the fore in my mind, and I started to really kind of wonder about that relationship was actually immediately after lockdown. And you know, at Berdoulat, the design practice, we design and make and sell furniture that's all made very much in a traditional manner. And our sales after lockdown really soared. And I thought to myself, okay, why is this happening? Is it simply because people have been in their homes staring at pieces of furniture that they might not like? And they think, oh, we suddenly we need a proper dining table or a proper dresser or whatever. And so they've, they've sought that. Or is it that more generally people have started to think about the desire for really high quality, really well made pieces of furniture, pieces that they can pass down to the next generation, the heirloom piece. And I like to think that that's the reason why we saw this increase in interest and increase in sales in what we do.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: One thing that I'd love to just unpack a little bit is as we, there's a crisis of efficiency, I would sort of say, that's happening in the world. And there's a shadow in that, that is around when we focus on the efficiency of GDP growth, of consumption, and even of sort of efficiency and sustainability, there's a spirit element that we miss that comes from the practice of craft, the practice of attention, and the resultant beauty in the surroundings, that I think is at the core of your practice. So what does it do to us, do you think, when we don't have the access to that sense of beauty?
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Well, you know, it's difficult because craft takes time and time costs money. So obviously what has happened gradually over the years is that the systems of production have changed in such a way as to make things more readily available to more people.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, which is something we should applaud.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): At a price point, which is fantastic. Yeah. But whilst it might cost less to manufacture things in that way, it's certainly costing the planet. Yeah.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: So my first career was as a craftsman. I haven't really shared that much more on the podcast. When I stopped being a Buddhist monk in the early 2000s, I went and lived on the west coast of Scotland. I became a traditional chair maker. So I fell the trees and I made chairs using knives out of green wood. And I think my mental health has never been better than in the days when I was doing that. And you have a practical article that you're making and you see the change in the world and you're slow, you're connected to the materials. And over time, I changed that crit, focused more on sustainability, which I feel has had an impact in the world, but it's been detrimental in a way to my own mental health, as I've been looking at bigger and bigger questions. So I've always remained interested that do we really have to give that up in order to do the thing that I intellectually think is necessary for sustainability? Because intuitively that feels like those two things should come back together again. But often in the world, it feels like they don't, which I think is to do with the pace of the modern world. You are sort of resolutely holding on to a process that involves space and consideration. Do you think there's a way in which we can bring those two things back together?
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Well, I think the problem is that, you know, proper craft takes time and time is money. And I think that, you know, we've become very, very good at making buildings quickly and inexpensively, which is of course a great thing. You know, we've got a housing crisis in this country and all over the world. But the problem is that that comes with a cost longer term. It comes with a cost to our own health as we live and dwell in these, you know, buildings that aren't terribly well thought through or well manufactured. But it also comes as a cost to the planet longer term as we throw up these buildings that are, you know, designed to live for, let's say, 40 or 50 years. As opposed to, for example, a Victorian equivalent that is, you know, still going strong. And I think that perhaps I'm hopeful that we might be able to shift things. And this will take a very, very long amount of time to achieve. But I'm hopeful that there might be scope to change people's mindsets and gradually offer them the choice to approach the construction of buildings in a different way. So if you think about what's happened with the organic food movement, the Soil Association was established a hundred or so years ago.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: That's the certified body in the UK.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): But yeah, indeed. And then, you know, in the 1960s, it was seen as quite a kind of hippie, idealist thing to eat organic food. But it gained traction. And nowadays, I feel like, relatively speaking, we've reached a point where quite quickly, if you think about a typical supermarket and how much aisle space is given over to organic produce versus non-organic, and even the pricing, they're getting there. It's still elitist and it's still, there's still a large difference between the two. But the fact that it's there, I think, shows that we are willing to think differently about the way we grow food and the way we consume food. Yeah. If there can be an equivalent when it comes to thinking about design, whether it's of furniture or buildings, then we might just be able to start rediscovering these moribund craft practices in the built environment and thinking more locally about the ingredients that go together to make a building. And of course, those ingredients in, you know, Victorian and beyond were a lot more sustainable. They allowed buildings to swell and shrink and breathe. And therefore, the buildings were almost extensions of ourselves. They were like living beings versus these buildings that are, you know, the children of modernism. And they're made with very, you know, plasterboard with very perfect mirror flat surfaces and hard corners and all these things that as the materials shifted and as ornament became surplus to requirement, you know, all of these things changed. And we ended up with these buildings that are actually so unlike us as human beings. There's no sensory engagement between the occupants of the buildings and the buildings themselves. The buildings can't adapt to the seasons and swell and shrink as they need to, because the materials are just not compatible. So they crack. And, you know, there's, there's problems with damp because they can't breathe properly. And so we end up with, you know, a really low quality result. Yeah. That's bad for the planet because it's having to kind of be demolished and rebuilt every 40 or 50 years. But it's also bad for our health, both physically and mentally.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And that point there, the mentally, but like the, if you are, if you are in like so many, so much of the time now you see a modern building and it kind of could be anywhere, right? It's like, it's an idea that's been constructed in somebody's head. It's been applied to different landscapes. And there's no variation or no recognition of a different location. The phrase you just said of ornament becomes surplus to requirement. That in a way, that manifestation separates us yet further from the context that we're in.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yes.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Which I think is a part of this disconnection that we have. I have to say one of the things that I think, as we, climate is a very difficult thing to get people to feel a sense of agency in. It feels very far away. And if we sort of say, well, the future of architecture or of design in a world where we deal with climate is just, we whack a couple of soda pounds on the roof and there's an inch of additional insulation hasn't really solved the challenge, right? In a way, what we need is, along with an architecture that solves our climate crisis, it reconnects us to our environment and it's more beautiful. So that feels to me like that would be part of how we get people engaged in that journey.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yes, exactly. Exactly. I couldn't agree more. And I feel like, I mean, if you look, for example, at classical architecture, which has existed for centuries and centuries in every part of the globe, more or less, and you think, why has that particular style been so successful? And I think the reason is, irrespective of whether it's been in fashion or not, I think it boils down to this idea of connection. Connection between humans and nature, connection between the human body and the building that then houses the human, and also connection between all of us who are enjoying that building at that certain point in time, and previous generations who've enjoyed, you know, different incarnations or that building itself, or different incarnations of that building. So there's that really, which I think is incredibly beautiful, that idea of connection across generations through form, through the orders, but, you know, ultimately through nature.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I understand a lot of what you're saying. Obviously, we live in Bath, and there's a lot of that, like, air to a precious city that you can sort of, you know, you only have to squint a bit, and you can see the Georgians walking around this city that looked basically the same at that time. But one of the things that I'm aware of is there's a certain nostalgia that I feel looking around. There's a time in the past that feels like it had more connection. And the challenge at the moment is both to take the best of that and to build this sustainable world that we're kind of groping towards at the moment that we're struggling with. You know, a big part of the political challenges we're facing is a nostalgia that's been weaponized, right? Make America great again, take back control. There's a nostalgia there. How can nostalgia that is manifested as part of our visual landscape become part of a tool for creating a better future?
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): That's a very interesting question. I mean, we are incredibly nostalgic in the UK. And I wonder whether that's because in the same way that if you've had a particularly happy childhood, you might have something might remind you of your childhood and it will make you feel good. And whilst, you know, if you look at the history of the UK, you know, we did all these frightful things that we should not be remotely proud of. But what we can be proud of is the sort of, they don't make them like they used to.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Right, nature across people.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yeah, exactly. Whereby, you know, whether it's a building or a car or a record player, you know, there's something so wonderful, isn't there, about the kind of the clunk and the click that is just lost nowadays. And I was in a hi-fi department of a shop the other day, you know, looking at...
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Delighted to hear they still have them.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Well, yeah, only just. But, and, you know, and I was sort of pressing all the buttons and just thinking, oh, it's just so rubbish, you know. It's just that tactility is not there and the quality is not there.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yeah, so I feel like there is a future for, you know, really beautifully crafted objects. And I feel like increasingly there's a desire for them, you know, because of that tactile quality that they give. And we spend our lives sort of mindlessly, silently tapping on screens.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): And I feel like maybe because of that, we all crave something that, you know, like the experience of opening and closing a sash window and the way the kind of the sound and the vibration and all those sorts of more sensory things. In terms of the way in which appreciation of craft can be carried through and into the future, I think what I really enjoy about what we do at Berdoulat is that we're making these pieces of furniture in an extremely traditional way using, you know, traditional jointing methods, traditional materials and so on. And yet each piece of furniture comes out of the workshop as a brand new entity and it goes out into the world, ready to then receive use and patina and I think they become more and more beautiful with age. And I've been back to Client's Homes and seen, you know, a table, for example, eight, nine, ten years down the line where it's kind of had use and the children have done their best. Yeah, but actually, you know, they become increasingly beautiful as they acquire that, that patina.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And that's so, that's, that's lovely to hear that. And it's so not true of so much in our lives, right? So many things we get and they're kind of like shiny and then they either break and they're not user serviceable or they kind of, you know, people long for that shiny new sense. I'm, I'm aware, you know, this, this is, this episode is coming out kind of in the holidays. There's a lot of that that's not around. How can people get a sense of that? How can people stay more connected to a relationship with objects that can age and couple with them in a world where that's not the norm anymore? Because we feel quite divorced from that experience that you're talking about.
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yes, yes, that's true. And, and as we were just saying, you know, that the sad thing is that it's become, it's become so expensive to make something really, really well, whatever that thing may be. And there will always be, you know, a cheaper option. But I think it's about people starting to sort of make that choice themselves and make that decision and, and really invest in something that will, that will outlive them and that can then be enjoyed by, by future generations.
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Tom Rivett-Carnac: I'd love to go back to where you started, which was around the golden mean and the Fibonacci sequence, which is this sort of magical sequence of numbers. This 12th century mathematician came up with that mimics the natural world. And to just ask you what that implies. And if we go back to kind of a Plato theory of beauty, is there is a way of designing our environments that calls us to a higher purpose in our, in our relationship to the world. I mean, Plato said it takes us closer to God. However, we understand that. Do you, do you buy that? Or do you think it's a...
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Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): A hundred percent.
00:31:07.372 --> 00:31:08.512
Tom Rivett-Carnac: A hundred percent, okay.
00:31:08.512 --> 00:31:13.592
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): And, you know, I think, I think it does take you closer to God. And I think probably the main reason for that is that within all of that, albeit scientific, mathematical, there is wonder. And I just don't think there's enough wonder in the world at the moment. We keep sort of following scientific development, which is so factually correct and proven. And yet there's something so wonderful about the gap between, you know, what's, what mankind has managed to decipher and something beyond that we just can't get a hold of. Yeah. And I love the fact that you cut the stem of a fern and you'll see a perfect spiral. And that can then be mapped by the movement in the galaxies. And I just love the fact that there are all these unknowns. And I think that if we, you know, the moment we know everything, I think life will be incredibly boring. And I think there's just not enough magic going on at the moment.
00:32:19.612 --> 00:32:21.392
Tom Rivett-Carnac: So how do you get closer to wonder? Because I love the way you phrase that, you know, I mean, I can't remember who said the world will not end for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder. How do you get closer to that?
00:32:29.592 --> 00:32:35.832
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Well, I had a very wonderful experience a couple of evenings ago, actually. So where we are currently, where I live, is just around the corner from the circus in Bath, which for those of you who don't know about it, it's a sort of ring of buildings, mid 18th century. In the center of the ring are these five London Plain trees. And it's hilarious because when you approach in a car, the sat nav says, you know, at the roundabout, take the second exit. It's the world classiest roundabout. It's so far from a roundabout, you know, it's the epicenter of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is extremely beautiful. And every year it hosts a carol service. And Bath residents gather underneath these plane trees. The Salvation Army Band is in the middle and we all sing carols. And when we first moved to Bath, the done thing was to take a candle with you. So everyone was sort of candle lit. Now, sadly, it's all a wash of kind of cool iPhone light, but we make a point of taking candles. And I was stood there surrounded by this beautiful architecture with the beautiful words of these carols in front of me, you know, lit by by a flickering candle. And stood next to my neighbor who, and we were both singing our hearts out, and she had such a beautiful voice. And I thought this is, this is a real moment, a really wonderful moment, where there is that connection to, I felt connected to my neighbor, to the place. But also, going back to what we were saying, connected to previous generations, who also sung those same words, you know, for hundreds and hundreds of years.
00:34:31.432 --> 00:34:32.012
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I love that. Did you think also about the future? Because there's an interesting concept of being a good ancestor, because of course you're not the end of that journey, right? You know, there will be others.
00:34:43.272 --> 00:34:44.812
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Indeed. I love that feeling. I think I take a lot of comfort in feeling like a link in a chain.
00:34:52.132 --> 00:34:52.752
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yes.
00:34:52.752 --> 00:34:58.572
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): And, you know, candlelight or an open fire, you know, I always sit in front of an open fire. And I think both of all the people, all the humans before me that have taken comfort in looking at the dancing flames and the heat it produces, but also thinking about future generations who will also have that same vision. A bit like when you look at the moon, I guess.
00:35:17.232 --> 00:35:25.812
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Those centers of wonder, of community, of time, of connection to history and past, the thing they have in common is you have to step back. You have to have a little bit of space around your scenario. You're not looking at your iPhone, you're not charging into the next thing. Like if we're thinking about this at Christmas, people have come to the end of a year, people in climate have had in many ways quite a difficult year, it's not been easy, Trump back in office. I think that what you're pointing to there that I think is universal is to just step back and allow these other things to come in. I mean, wherever you are in the world, whether you're surrounded by these beautiful things, beauty is everywhere when you have enough space around you.
00:35:56.232 --> 00:35:59.632
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Yes, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah.
00:35:59.632 --> 00:36:02.412
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Patrick, this has been a wonderful conversation.
00:36:02.552 --> 00:36:03.032
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Thank you.
00:36:03.032 --> 00:36:08.152
Tom Rivett-Carnac: I would love to invite you if there's another bit of your book that you would like to read as we come to an end.
00:36:08.152 --> 00:36:08.532
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Thank you. Well, there is a bit which I think might be relevant to what we've been speaking about.
00:36:12.912 --> 00:36:14.812
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Wonderful, yeah, yeah.
00:36:14.812 --> 00:36:18.312
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Traditionally made things are inherently beautiful. The fact that they are made by hand not only connects the end user with the maker, but also the maker with their fellow ancestral makers. Whether or not we are ourselves practitioners by appreciating the contemporary practice of these crafts, we are connected to the past. I find this connection deeply comforting and believe that in this throwaway digital age where factual scientific progress is center stage, we crave a little myth and mystery. We yearn for something wider, something unknown, something magical. The handing down and practicing of traditions, be it through craft, food recipes or even the act of singing Old Lang Syne at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, provides a portal to the past coupled with a promise of the future. We become links in an endless chain and thus feel reassuringly small. At my childhood home of Berdoulat, the landline was right outside my bedroom and when I was about 16, an early morning call woke me from my teenage slumbers. DDA, the local antiques dealer, needed a hand because his usual helper for house clearances had done his back in. A few minutes later I was sitting next to him in his beaten up van and off we went to a nearby town. I vividly remember the sense that the flat we were clearing had only very recently lost its occupant as I removed a lace doily from under a set of house keys by the front door. On dismantling the bed I asked DDA do you not find this a little intrusive to be taking apart a little old lady's bed to sell which probably just days ago witnessed her death? Not at all he replied because next week I will probably sell this bed that just saw death to a newlywed couple who will make love and make life in it. And that was the moment I learned about the true appreciation of beautifully made objects that transcend generations. Perhaps it goes beyond physical objects. I remember as a child seeing Giselle our neighbor up the lane from Berdoulat, put a spoonful of the previous day's soup into that day's soup, an act she and her mother-in-law before her had performed for as long as they could remember. I imagined an ancient broth spanning several generations, all enjoying the same rich stock. What a marvellous way to be linked to the past. As a retailer like Didier, I must at times wear my commercial hat. But while things are bought and sold, I rather like the idea that in a wider arena, nothing really belongs to anyone. And there's something beyond ownership or acquisition to be enjoyed. Passing down and sharing, whether that be in the immediate family environment or on a wider scale, is a beautiful act of kindness.
00:39:29.292 --> 00:39:31.772
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Patrick, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to speak to you. Thank you for making the time and welcoming us into your beautiful home. The book is fantastic. We would encourage everybody to pre-order it on your website. There'll be a link in the show notes.
00:39:40.312 --> 00:39:42.532
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Thank you so much and very happy Christmas to you.
00:39:46.672 --> 00:39:54.532
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Okay, so we're going to have a quick wrap up today, but we'd love to hear any reflections from both of you on the issues raised in that conversation.
00:39:54.532 --> 00:40:00.232
Paul Dickinson: There's a phrase in the interview that just blew my mind, which I knew, but let's restate it. Craft takes time and costs money. And the truth is, I was really struck by a mentor that I had many years ago, who was long deceased, called Eckhart Vincent. And he said, you should put tax on material extraction and you should take all tax off employment. And I've never seen a better economic and political philosophy than now. You know, with the AI coming, you know, this is the time to make our economies more craft based and less mass production based potentially by shifting tax in a way like this. But, you know, I was struck particularly by that. And also just the beautiful phrases like an endless chain that makes you feel reassuringly small. Designers, you know, I worked in the design industry for a while and it's about attention to detail. And I think volume consumption can constrict that. So, yeah, I agree that it's not a lack of wonders, but a sense of wonder that we risk. And aesthetics can bring that, even if you don't agree with Patrick's aesthetic, I think the principle is that aesthetics are a kind of answer to a sort of volume consumption crisis.
00:41:02.132 --> 00:41:02.612
Christiana Figueres: Yeah. And I guess, I mean, it so happens that this is the interview and that he's your friend, Tom, but I don't think that we would want to say that craft is the only way to beauty. For sure. It is one, and it's the one that he chose, and, you know, absolutely gorgeous the work that he does. I think the message here in this conversation goes beyond craft or no craft. I think we're saying, take a moment to breathe. Take a moment to connect with yourself. It so happens that he connects with himself through his craft, just like you connected with yourself doing your chairs. And each one of us has a different way of connecting with ourselves and with those, I would call them those seeds of regeneration and of joy and of love that we all have, but that we throw so much garbage on them that they never have a chance to sprout. And so the invitation is, take a few moments in these days to not be overwhelmed by the consumption and accumulation and the endless eating or the endless cooking. Take a moment to breathe. Take a moment to be grateful for yourself, for those around you, for all of nature. Yeah, just take a moment to simply be in addition to all the doing.
00:42:38.632 --> 00:42:39.572
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Very nice. Yeah, I think that's exactly how we should interpret and understand this interview, is that actually this is one lens on the necessity for more spaciousness at a critical time and at a critical moment, not only in the year, but also in human evolution and in all of our lives. We all run so hard and work so hard, and that's something we should applaud. But at the same time, we need to step back and create the spaciousness. However, that comes, whether that's through craft and architecture and beauty or Buddhism or whatever else it might be. I think that probably takes us to the end of this episode. Anyone who is taking any time off, we really hope you enjoy it. It has been an interesting year, 2025. It's had a few headwinds. But Christiana and I had a team call earlier today with our team at the end of the year. I don't know if you want to say anything, Christiana, but one of the things I've picked up this year is, we're never going to definitively win, and we're never going to definitively be defeated. We're going to keep going, and there'll always be an opportunity to make the future a better place. If you can really internalize that, it stops you running breathlessly at the necessity to get somewhere and allows you to sink in to doing what you can do at any given moment. So maybe that's one thought to take with us into next year. Anything to end with, Christiana?
00:43:58.432 --> 00:44:05.792
Christiana Figueres: Yeah, I would say, yes, I agree, we're never going to win and we're never going to be defeated or lose, but what did you say? We just keep on going? As long as we understand that that's not a mechanistic statement. It's not simply about continuing to put one foot in front of the other. For me, it is the invitation of continuing to do the work that we do, hopefully every day or every year in this case, with a deeper understanding of why we do this and what do we have at hand within ourselves that allows us to do deeper work, not just in terms of contemplation, inner contemplation, but deeper impact work. That's the piece that is so exciting to me, that the more we dig into ourselves and understand who we are and what we're doing here, the more impact we can have out there in the world. And we know that impact is exactly what we need.
00:45:07.852 --> 00:45:10.472
Paul Dickinson: Last words from me from Stevie Wonder and Churchill. Kindness knows no shame and we do our best.
00:45:13.112 --> 00:45:13.512
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): All right.
00:45:13.512 --> 00:45:14.492
Tom Rivett-Carnac: Thank you, friends. Hope everyone is getting a break if you do that, and we'll see you next week.
00:45:17.952 --> 00:45:18.432
Christiana Figueres: Bye.
00:45:18.432 --> 00:45:18.872
Paul Dickinson: Bye.
00:45:18.872 --> 00:45:19.012
Patrick Williams (guest, Berdoulat): Bye.
