Earlier this month Zak and I were invited to the opening of an exhibition for a newly-established interior design firm called Caligula Supernova, at 69 New King’s Road until June 12th. It is the subject of a recent interview with the designer Lucas Rufin in House and Garden. Sadly we were unable to be in London for it but Rufin very kindly agreed to give an interview by WhatsApp.

In an interview for Inigo.com, he says that he chose the name Caligula Supernova because of a long affection for the 1979 film starring Malcolm McDowell and the 1938 play by Albert Camus.

The concept for the show came from a conversation with the late interior designer Robert Kime. Kime advised him to make an exhibition of ten of his favourite pieces. ‘He told me it was a way to make a name for yourself, to meet other people and to show them your taste. He said: “It doesn’t matter if people buy them. If they do, that’s great. If they don’t, at least people have seen what you can do.”’

Caligula, poster boy for everything that seems a tad extreme about the Roman emperors, seems an unlikely muse. But he was a showman and he certainly knew how to make a splash. Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars describes one such performance. One night a dozen senators were woken up at their houses by the Praetorian Guard and ordered to the Palatine. The senators, grave and stoic, said a last goodbye to their families and their households. They were taken to the palace and led into a dark room where they prepared themselves to die, gravely and stoicly. Suddenly torches were lit around the walls and the emperor burst out from behind a curtain in full makeup and dressed as a dancer. He did a quick routine accompanying himself on castanets, waited for their applause then exited, leaving them to make their own way home again. Unforgettable theatre. A bloody good night.

I wonder if every artist would secretly love to have this control over their audience. My husband once told me the rule of a music playlist when someone gives it to you. You have to listen to each song in the order intended – at least once – before shuffling. Because that was how it was made. A playlist is one piece. In the same way, Rufin’s ten objects are presented in an order and that order imposes a narrative. A gradual unwrapping of an idea. A design show is a two-way traffic. We look to decode a self-portrait and at the same time wonder how we would look dressed in that style. Now, up come the lights.

1. is a pair of Louis XVI-style wall-lights from the Judge’s Lodging in Leicester Castle. Louis XVI is a bit like Mozart and Robert Adam. Whether you’re a massive fan or not it is actually as good as everyone says. My eye went straight to the provenance, Judge’s Lodging, Leicester Castle – how exciting – and skipped the candlesticks themselves at first. But they are actually quite remarkable. Little bits of cleverness and work going on all over making the whole without showing off. This is style.

2. is a pair of Corinthian column table lamps from Laura Ashley, with new marbled shades by Marie Vit of Honfleur. Corinthian columns are always beautiful and true marbling is a nearly-lost art. Marie Vit is one of the last paper-marblers working in the old manner. I remember doing it in art class at prep school, swirling oils on water and laying the paper on top. It was quite magical.

The third object is a black basalt bust of Mercury signed by Edward William Wyon after the statue in the Louvre. Wyon was a member of the famous Wyon sculpting family – William Wyon engraved Queen Victoria’s coin portraits – and Edward William designed busts for Wedgwood. In Rome Mercury was the god of commerce, eloquence, and theft; and in Gaul and Britain he was the god of all the arts, according to Julius Caesar.

Number four is not at all what it seems. This malachite plinth that Mercury stands on with its shining depths is really painted rosewood. Simply wow! The artist, Magdalena Gordon, is in Rufin’s words, ‘one of few people who continue this centuries’ old tradition of ornamental painting, faux stone, wood-graining and gilding. You can find her on Instagram: @magdagordon‘ – a gracious acknowledgement in keeping with the exhibition’s character.

At the centre of the exhibition is this painting at number 5, a matador by the Scottish-realist painter Gerard Burns. Burns is an artist whose sitters make up the great and good of the new Scotland and who has positioned himself as its standard-bearer in art. This painting is one of a set made during a trip to Andalusia ranks as one of his best paintings alongside his full-length of Doddie Weir (National Galleries of Scotland). It is modern but thanks to the costume, the ‘blue silk embroidered outfit, the famous ‘Traje de Luces’, literally the ‘suit of light’ – it’s also timeless. It alludes to Manet but also to the Eighteenth Century. I had to check it wasn’t a friend of mine in masquerade dress. Burns is also a sculptor who has made a series of bronzes of the Minotaur, a too rare subject in all media.

Number six is this art deco cabinet c.1930 by Charles A. Richter of Bath Cabinet Makers Ltd with label. The company made furniture from 1892 to 1959. Rufin notes that they produced furniture in a range of styles across that time, from French, through Adam and Art Nouveau to Art Deco. This sideboard shows how well Deco geometry superimposes on the clean lines and good proportion of late Eighteenth Century furniture. I asked Rufin about this. He agreed that Art Deco and 20th Century modernism are obliged to Eighteenth Century for the forms, ‘but also the thoughts: the search for the purity of the line, if not symmetry, the balance of a room, a building, or in the Art.’ This is a crucial idea.

Next is a pair of George III armchairs in the French style. That in itself is rather fascinating.I didn’t know English makers did French style at that date. The condition of this pair is tremendous. Worn velvet and worm-holes in the chair arms. Properly authentic with that sense of the object as an object that has been made by someone and has a history. Plus the faded blue-grey is a beautiful colour.

Number 8 is an Eighteenth Century Aubusson verdure tapestry from the Château du Mesnil d’Ô in Normandy. This is one of those objects that looks as though it’s absorbed history like cigarette smoke. Patinated to the point of being haunted. A curtain makes a stage. And we’re reminded Rufin was a costume-designer in the theatre before he was an interior designer. A painter asks how does this make you feel? An interior designer also asks how does this make you act? Rufin says that visitors to the exhibition recognised the country house drawing room vibe that Rufin had created in his displays. How did that work itself on them? That is the alchemy.

Number 9 is a pair of sofas upholstered in a beautiful and grandly-frayed blue and white damask. One is an important important Eighteenth Century canapé de forme nouvelle c.1785 by Georges Jacob, cabinet-maker and supplier of seat furniture to the French Royal family. There is a similar seat in Salon de la Reine in Le Petit Trianon, Versailles. The other is a Nineteenth Century replica by Charles Mellier & Co, 50 Margaret Street, founded by the French-born antique dealer and furniture maker Charles Mellier.

The last of the ten objects is the large Baroque painting of Antiochus and Stratonice (shown above) attributed to Ciro Ferri, an artist in the studio of Pietro da Cortona. This too was something I never knew before. It is a very rare subject. Antiochus son of King Seleucus is at death’s door from unrequited loved for his step-mother Stratonice. Seleucus realises that only one thing will save his son, and – not without some regret as his expression in this painting shows – allows her to marry his son. It’s a good painting. The figure of Stratonice shown here is really well done – the face and hand are terrific. So, for example, is the chair that Seleucus is sitting on. You’d think that there must be a drawing for this extraordinary seat somewhere, or a printed source.

If the painting could be identified by a furniture detail it would fit with the theme of Rufin’s exhibition. The interrelation of the crafts. The universality of taste. The belief that beautiful objects share particular qualities in common across all periods. Excellence of form and manufacture and, of course, utility. Fashion changes but these essentials are a constant. Rufin acknowledges that his generation ‘are more attracted [by the 18th Century], even in architecture, where there is a huge revival of classicism.’ He sees this as ‘a reaction to the full Modernism of the last 30 years, like in the early 20th Century where people were tired of the heavy Victorian aesthetic, allegory of a bygone period, and went for something “lighter” and more elegant: neoclassical and neo-Louis XVI.’

Yet Rufin’s choices represent modern art as well, and he says that visitors particularly ‘liked the mix between antique pieces’ – the Baroque painting and the 1780s French sofa – ‘and the vintage ones’ such as the 1930s sideboard and the 1970s Laura Ashley lamps. This is the beginning of a new trend.

Great art – and good design – is always modern and for that reason it is, like Shakespeare, ‘for all time.’ It is universal. It is always satisfying in that complex sense we shorthand as ‘beautiful’. This is what I call the Early Georgian silver principle, exemplified by this cup I saw on Antiques Roadshow the other week. If you came from Mars and knew nothing of humans, if it came from any period, if you loathed everything the 1700s stood for, you would still find this cup beautiful. This in a nutshell is the moral of Caligula Supernova. Your very good health.

(Image (c)BBC Antiques Roadshow; all other images (c) Lucas Rufin.

For further information see the website, https://www.caligulasupernova-interiors.com.