The Dennis Severs’ House—in Spitalfields, London—is a triumph, it’s been said, of “historical imagination.” It is also a three-dimensional still life that Severs, born in California in 1948, lived in. The rooms were meant to evoke the atmosphere of centuries past, and to emit, Severs wrote, the light he longed for, the light he saw “in the combination of old varnish and paint.” Severs filled the house with stories and ghosts. Into this house came a story within the stories—Simon Pettet. Severs and Pettet met in 1983, and the attraction, the affinity, was instant. Pettet was an art student fascinated by Delft pottery, tin-glazed earthenware shimmering white and blue, deeply decorative. Pettet mastered the technique—meanwhile moving in with Severs—and began producing his own delftware in historical shapes born of fantasy and touched with wit. He was carrying the form forward, into artistic expression, but it was all cut short when he died, in 1993, at the age of 27. “Making History,” an exhibition of Pettet’s art, is curated by Rupert Thomas, the former editor of The World of Interiors. Pettet’s pieces are jewels in any setting, but arranged by Thomas at Dennis Severs’ House, they glow in their native light. —Laura Jacobs