The Ugliest Thing I Love: Jean Jullien talks about a hideous gift from his parents

My parents came to visit from France and we we spotted it on Columbia Road market, this horrible, ceramic, onion-head pot. I was really fascinated by it and kept going on about it to my family. I’m not really into antiques or kitsch stuff but this one caught my attention. So my mum bought it as a present for the studio that I share with my brother Nico, Daniel Frost and Thibaud Herem – and it’s still here.

I love anything anthropomorphic. I find it fascinating that just by giving hints of a face to an object, you give it character and can transform it into something completely different – even in an inanimate object like this one there’s a real sense of personality. It’s bizarre but ingenious! Even so it’s a hideous object – the colour, the squinting, crying face; everything about it is so wrong!

This type of ceramic container has very strong associations for me though. It takes me back to my grandmother’s kitchen, which was full of treasures that are in many ways visually distasteful, but have such a strong emotional effect on me. I remember she had a series of black and white prints of photographic close-ups of fences and eggs. They were really odd but their memory has always stayed with me.

The kitchen was very 1970s kitsch and packed full of tupperware (my grandmother was quite into the whole tupperware party thing) and small ceramic pots with random illustrations on them; birds, old cars, traditional gentlemen, all sorts. She also had a selection of more “modern” plates for her kids with very cool 1970s illustrations on them. The whole kitchen was a camaïeu of brown and beige so I can totally imagine the onion pot fitting nicely there.