We're a London-based startup that was set up by Jack Marsh & Adam Davies in 2024 to remake the art of the past with AI.

“It sounds a little trite, but I think it is true: technological change is pushing us into fundamentally different conditions, and we have a choice: either to resist or embrace. For the first time in human history, it will be not just possible but extremely easy for people to create beautiful things that they design themselves.

But what we want to do is actually a little different from what people might expect. We actually want to root this technological change in the traditions of the past. AI is trained on the past. That’s what it knows. And we found that it can produce past objects with quite compelling fidelity. We want AI to support and explore artistic traditions, not blast them apart.”

— read the full interview with us at Rock Badger Agency here.

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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Beauty

   “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”

   — John Keats.

   We are committed to producing goods of the highest quality and with the highest degree of craft.

   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.