You Are What You Give with... Florence & Richard Ingleby
More than a decade before I began Scribble & Daub, Richard & Florence were my first (and only!) employers at their eponymous gallery in Edinburgh, one of Scotland's most beautiful and respected contemporary art spaces (below, paintings in an exhibition by Caroline Walker). After many years spent in their orbit, I can tell you that they have exquisite taste, are warm and generous hosts, and give great gifts, so they are abundantly qualified for the task of sharing entertaining anecdotes from their love story, and excellent present ideas - read on to enjoy them...
Could you tell us first how you met?
Florence: We were introduced by a friend called Charlie-two-shirts, almost 40 years ago, just after we’d left university and had moved to London. He sounds like a mafia underling, but the nickname was a literal one, because he always wore a shirt over his shirt. Anyway, he was a thoughtful guy who knew we were both signed up for a year long course at Christies and he thought we should know one another, so he took me to Richard’s flat in West Kensington to meet him. Richard was in the middle of whizzing cucumber soup for his mother, who was coming to visit. I assumed he was gay…
What is your most memorable Valentine’s day?
Florence: Corny as it is, our first romantic entanglement was on Valentine's day, a year or so later, so that one sticks in the mind.
What’s the best Valentine gift you have given or received? Or the most romantic thing you have done for each other…
Florence: We aren’t very good at Valentine's presents, but one that I’ll never forget was the year we gifted each other tango lessons. I think we’d just watched Scent of a Woman. We turned up to a shabby church hall somewhere near Euston, thinking we were the bees knees and watched in a somewhat superior fashion as elderly folk (probably the age we now are) shuffled in. Within minutes they were gliding and dipping around us, as we stumbled and fumbled. The more hopeless we were the more we giggled. I laughed so much I wet my pants, so we made an early exit. I’d still like to learn to tango though
Richard: very early on in our relationship I planned an impromptu weekend in Madrid to see a Velasquez exhibition at the Prado. A friend suggested a hotel, which turned out to be a brothel, which set the romance back a little. It was one of those once in a lifetime gatherings of paintings by an artist we both loved which we had to see, but this was before the days of online booking and timed entry and at the last minute I heard that there were 4 hour queues to get in. I’d just started working for a gallery in Bond Street and I complained to my older, wiser colleagues that my romantic weekend was looking like it would involve a lot of standing around. One of them said - "well why don’t you phone Norman Rosenthal and ask him to get you in without queuing". Norman was the boss of the RA at the time and in some kind of relationship with the person who ran the Prado. I thought he was being serious, so I made the call. Norman was clearly mystified by the presumption of a pip-squeak who he’d never met, but nonetheless he fixed it for us to waltz straight in. When I got back to work I reported our success, only for my colleague to choke on his coffee and scream at me that he’d been joking. He sent me straight out to buy flowers for Norman by way of apology. I nearly lost my job.
What is your favourite romantic film?
Richard: Tough question. Not that I don’t like romantic films, but I can never remember what I’ve seen and what I haven’t. I often get two thirds of the way through a movie and realise it isn’t the first viewing. A fairly recent film which I know I’ve only seen once, and which I liked a lot for its off-key romanticism, is Celine Song's Past Lives.
Florence: Cinema Paradiso, does this count? If not, I'd say Carol, with its stillness and its tension and all that smoking while wearing gloves.
And book?
Florence: I’m a great lover of big, generation-spanning books. Romance plays a part but it’s more about the emotional pitch of the whole novel. I adored Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy which I re-read on a trip to India in 2016. And, more recently, I was equally delighted by ’The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny’ by Keran Desai.
Richard: I’ve just finished that one. I’m a much slower reader than Florence so my reading list tends to follow in the slipstream of hers, but I also liked it a lot. I was looking at the bookshelf just now for a bit of memory-jogging inspiration, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife jumped out. My memory of the detail is a bit murky, but I remember it being an unusual and quite surprising sort of love story. It must be 20 years since I read it, time for a re-read I think.
And song?
Florence: We walked down the aisle to Stevie Wonder’s As, so I’m going with this, but Nick Cave’s Into My Arms comes a close second.
Richard: What she said, but with a side order of Salad in the form of Terry Hall’s version of ‘Dream a little dream"
And art work?
Florence: I love paintings that make something special out of the very ordinary. Chantal Joffe's paintings of her partner Richard aren’t exactly romantic, but they are filled with a day to day tenderness that speak of genuine love. The American painter Aubrey Levinthal’s wonderful paintings of domestic scenes featuring her husband Alex do something similar. 
Richard: something I saw recently which plucked a heartstring was in Miami of all places, at Art Basel Miami Beach, the big American art fair where our gallery was exhibiting. Amidst the sculptures of sharks and paintings of cowboys on unicorns there was a teeny, tiny self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, the size of a coin, painted for her secret lover so that he could carry her hidden in his breast pocket, close to his heart. It was very special.
And meal?
Florence: we once had lobster for lunch in a restaurant and Richard deconstructed the tail shells and rejoined them as a sort of heart-shaped bracelet. It was as deeply a romantic gesture as it was misguided.
Richard: There used to be an amazing restaurant called the Altnaharrie Inn on the shores of Loch Broom in the Highlands. It was run by a Norwegian woman called Gunn Erickson who was one of the first really great chefs to mix the Scandi/Scottish thing of super-local foraged ingredients. There were no roads to the Inn so you had to get there by boat from Ullapool, but we once walked in the long way through the hills from the glen behind. Something about the anticipation, and walking miles together to get there with the knowledge of the feast ahead is very memorable.
If you could pick one thing from Scribble & Daub’s Valentine edit, what would it be?
Florence: The pink and red paper streamers obviously. I love having multi-coloured ones in the house at Christmas, but the combination of red and pink is gorgeous.
Richard: Much to my family’s dismay I’m afflicted by the curse of loving a pun, so I have to say the wee card with the 'I love Yew’ hedge.
Please tell us a love-ly gift you’d give, or you’d like to receive…
Florence: we’re probably old enough to revisit the tango lessons.
Richard: wildflowers and whisky, in that order. And if those aren’t available, a ferry ticket to the Inner Hebrides.
Florence's Gift List:
Flowers, wild ones are best (my mother always dug up snowdrops which I’d plant) but if not then a bunch from Broughton St Flowers, preferably arranged by Ellen.
A flower frog from the Edinburgh Mercantile company.
A good cook book. There’s a great selection at Toppings and we are currently enjoying this - Umai: Recipes from a Japanese Home Kitchen.
We love these, at fabulous Bard, except we have an eight month old puppy, Myrtle, who thinks doorstops are placed specifically for her to chew: Bog Oak Doorstop at Bard Scotland.
Richard's Gift List:
