Born in Zambia in 1941, Hylton Nel spent his childhood on a farm surrounded by animals, one of his recurring motifs. After studying fine art in Grahamstown, he moved to England, where he worked in a small antiques shop. Since then, all his creations – plates, bowls, figurative objects – seem to spring from a youth spent among knick-knacks.

In 1970, the low, heavy English skies made him want to return to South Africa. He taught pottery and then drawing to his students. But in the early 1990s, he decided to dedicate his practice entirely to ceramics. He began to tap into a wide range of inspirations, from erotic paintings on ancient Greek vases to depictions of cats in Egyptian art and the expressions on African masks. In his hands, pottery becomes poetry.

Beguilingly, the lover of ceramics also has a little quirk: each one of his works is dated precisely – the year, the month, the day. Those dates, like biographical markers, shed light on his sensibility in the moment: “These plates are all I have to say.” In Paris, a figurine punctuating the décor at the Dior show read “An elegant life”. In other words, the cat’s meow.