In 2024, Jack Marsh and Adam Davies founded Not Quite Past in Brockley, London. We are a design startup that pioneers the use of AI to make beautiful, historically-inspired, and entirely customisable objects for the home.
We began with Delft tiles as our first product, but we want to offer you the ability to design every aspect of your spaces, both interior and architectural.
Photo taken by Eva Vermandel in South London in 2024.
Made with the Small emblem with no corner motif model.
AI is a magnificent new tool for human creativity. But, like any powerful tool, it takes some time to understand how to use it well. We believe, so far, its potential for interiors and architecture remains underexplored.
At Not Quite Past, we want to make AI beautiful and useful, playful while rooting it in artistic traditions and styles.
And, most importantly, we want to make physical, well-made, useful objects, combining AI imagery with high-quality manufacturing.
Let's use the miraculous image-making powers of AI to make our homes and buildings more beautiful and meaningful.
The best way to get in touch with us is by email at support@notquitepast.com.
We love to hear from our customers, so please don't hesitate to get in touch about any projects that our tiles might be a good fit for. We're always happy to help.
We'd also love to hear from you if you'd like to work with us, if you'd like to write about us, or if you have ideas of other products we could make.
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Tradition
Many artists and builders in the 20th century promoted the loss of tradition, local identity, and history in design. They believed in a revolutionary and universal functionalism. Houses were to be machines for living in; walls were to be blank, geometric, and unadorned.
Coupled with mass production and the savage pursuit of profit motive, ornament, which is so often the repository of tradition, vanished. The interiors and exteriors of the world became ever more alike, ever more less personal and homely, ever more dissatisfying and inhuman.
With the arrival of generative AI, this situation has become much more critical. AI is a powerful tool. Used foolishly, it can multiply the banal rubbish of the world, leading to further homogenisation of all human cultures.
But used wisely, it can bring about a renewed production of objects in the artistic traditions of the past.
We hope to demonstrate how AI can be used wisely. We use AI to explore, support, and, most importantly, produce things in the artistic traditions and cultures of the past.
Devoted study of artistic traditions is at the heart of our work. We always study an artistic tradition before we intervene. (See our essay on delftware, for example.) There is so much to be found and returned.
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Life
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire”
— Gustav Mahler.
“Everything gives way to experimentation”
— Josiah Wedgwood.
“There is no wealth but life”
— John Ruskin.
Art must always be made for the living, and it must always reconcile us with life. Art made for the past is not art.
Traditions are created and sustained through innovations. We use AI to create new things in artistic traditions, since that is what gives them life. While we strive to create a strong fidelity to traditional styles, we give you the power to change as you please. That is what makes a tradition.
We do not devote ourselves to remains of the past, but their spirit. Wedgwood, were he alive today, would surely have used AI.
AI is the technology of our day. We speak to the present using the tools of the present.
Through our models, we are all revealing a new AI aesthetic, exploring its many possibilities. We want people to direct what they want in their images, not for us to impose it on them.
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Beauty
We are committed to producing goods of the highest quality and with the highest degree of craft.“A thing of beauty is a joy forever”
— John Keats.
We want our work to used, kept, and passed on. We want to produce objects that people wish to live with for centuries.
Industrial methods should be embraced and refined to make the beautiful. We will always look for the most cutting-edge technologies to help us build more beautifully and more cheaply. In this, we are following the examples of the artists of the past.
Well-made, durable and beautiful objects are one of the surest ways to be sustainable, since no replacements are needed.