What's Beneath Our Feet

A floor can be just as provocative or beautiful as a painting.  Mosaic floors are beautiful to look at, tell a story and are heaven to walk on, the tiny mosaic pieces at slightly different levels, creating movement and sensation in three dimensions.  One of the most durable and lasting forms of floor, mosaics have been in evidence for thousands of years; made from pebbles, then tiny squares of glass, stone, terracotta and other materials.

Many exquisite examples still exist from the ancient world of Mesopotamia, the Roman world and beyond.  The significance of their pictorial message varied greatly over time and place but the intricacy of the work certainly suggested wealth and permanence in the places they were used.  Here are a few examples close to home and further afield.

Littlecote House, the Elizabethan house near the river Kennet in Wiltshire, where Henry VIII wooed Jane Seymour, is the site of a Roman floor, rediscovered in 1727 by the steward of Littlecote. The Orpheus Mosaic is almost all that remains of this hall.  Its symbolism was forbidden due to legislation against pagan ritual around 400AD.  Most of the buildings in the complex were either destroyed or fell into decay.

The Beauty of Durres, The National Museum, Tirana, 4th century BC. 

This intricate pebble mosaic was found deep in the foundations of a private house, 

apparently the floor of an ancient bathing/resting chamber.

The extraordinary fourth century mosaic floor still in place beneath the stones at the Church of The Nativity in Bethlehem, commissioned by Helena, Constantine's mother.

Uncovered in the 1950s, this villa boasts incredibly complex depictions of animals, figures and geometric patterns.  This floor is intriguing because at first glance it could be an embroidery or weaving.  Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily.

Palace of The Grand Master of the Knights of St John, sacked by the Turks, nearly destroyed by an explosion in the mid nineteenth century, and eventually rebuilt around 1940 by Italian occupiers, the mosaic floors from Kos are a central feature in this palace of medieval origin which has been a museum since the end of the second world war.

 Moved to the Palace of The Grand Master of The Knights of St John, 
this Byzantine floor is from Kos, thought to be the birthplace of Hippocratos.

A detail from the old testament floor mosaic at The Cathedral at Aquileia. The story of Jonah and the Whale is depicted in the pavement.  Dating from the 4th Century AD, the floor was only excavated in the early 1900s, discovered as often is the case beneath successive layers of flooring.

This geometric pattern is familiar to all of us, and seen in mosaic form at Delos.  

Tunisian floor mosaic depicting farm life, 4th Century at the Barda museum, Tunis.

From recent excavations of an ancient villa in Urfa (the ancient settlement of Edessa) Turkey, "Villa of the Amazons", a border detail of 5th/6th Century Byzantine mosaic unearthed during works.  Twelve rooms are paved in these mosaics.  Interestingly, just a few miles away is the oldest recorded site of Gobekli Temple, dated 9000 BC - with evidence of terazzo like floors, precursors of mosaics!

The border detail depicting the duck is pertinent to my family as we are nursing a wild duckling separated from its family.  Its current home is not nearly as elegant - a nesting box with heat lamp and a grass pen in the garden that resists all attempts at interior design and decoration!  
What a memento a floor like this would be of our time with Jerri the duck...

Inspiration outdoors

Spring is the time I love the best.  It is like living in a continuous cliffhanger - whilst watching each tree, shrub and plant waiting hopefully to unfurl its leaves and flowers.  Throughout Tokyo there is mile upon mile of cherry blossom, turning even the humble narrow residential canals into colour lit, confetti dusted tunnels of fragrant beauty.  It is one of my fondest memories of living there, still vivid many years later.  And what a jumping off point for colour and texture in interiors...

Surrounding our Hampshire studio, I watched with delight as the lilac and apple blossom jostled for dominion in the orchard, their lime green leaves chaotically entwined overhead… I held my breath when the wind and rain came to tease and flatten the intoxicating blooms.  It is interesting to drive from city to country, North to South and see how the season progresses.  We are nestled in a sheltered valley and our flowering is a bit later and lasts longer generally than the village nearby.  The colours are such a welcome relief after the dingy, mucky winter we've just emerged from.  Couple that with a blue sky and the perfect palette emerges for the season.

That brings me to Bluebells - which test my driving skills...  When I am not admiring them in the wood near our house in The Vyne forest, I'm driving trying to avoid admiring them.

The wild abandon of these colours has inspired a new colourway of our Silbury Linen.  Have a peek…

I adore peonies as they were my great grandmother's favourite and they are such a blowsy and fleeting gift each Spring.  I was recently at The Manor at Upton Gray, Rosamund Wallinger's fantastic restored Gertrude Jekyll garden and was privileged to spot the first bursting blossom.

Finally here is a vignette from an interior we completed last Spring using vibrant woven silks on our hand sewn cushions to herald Spring in an Orangery.

Think Spring and enjoy...

Lost houses, surviving pictures

A recent visit to an acquaintance's gallery reminded me of how many houses have been lost over the centuries; not just great country houses and castles but many more humble dwellings.  What this means to the landscape is significant.  It changes the views over the horizon, from the car window, along the footpath and walking down any city or village street.

From an interior design perspective it changes the way we view and use rooms.  The current penchant for open plan living/dining is actually an ancient way of living - but not many ancient structures in England exist to illustrate this - or if they do they are draughty museum preserved rooms minus the mod cons we consider necessities for living well and comfortably today.  If they are not preserved in aspic then they have been repurposed as comfortable rooms, perhaps still large but without lofty ceiling heights. If they are ruins, our imagination cannot often grasp what once was there.

Here are just a few examples of lost houses we've seen and considered of late.

Halsnead Hall, built in 1684, was Sir John Soane's only Lancashire country house, altered by Richard Willis in 1789.  Although drawings survive at the Soane Museum, the house was demolished in 1932.   The painting is attributed to Charles Vincent Barber, a landscape painter from Birmingham who exhibited at The Royal Academy.  Halsnead Hall is at Miles Wynn Cato, picture dealer specialising in Welsh and British pictures.  The house here is undoubtedly grand with its classical portico, but in this picture related to the park surrounding it in a way that gives the painting a pleasing dreamlike quality, the trees and cattle naturalistically represented, reminiscent of Constable. 

View of Halsnead Hall, Lancashire.

A contemporary image depicts the romantic ruin of Clun Castle in South Shropshire.  Built by Robert de Say, this motte and bailey castle was an important stronghold along the Welsh Marches.  Later it was in the hands of the Fitzalan family and continued to be strategically important.  When the family abandoned it as a residence in favour of the more modern and comfortable Arundel, it was used as a hunting lodge before eventually falling into disrepair. What interests me is the powerful effect it has on the landscape and the village of Clun.  The castle commands attention still and in a way, diminishes what is around it, its original purpose still apparent.  This bold image, its outline crudely represented in linocut, backlit by a sulphurous light, captures the visual impact of the building's form.

A contemporary linocut and collage by artist Druscilla Cole

This picture of Horseheath Hall in Cambridgeshire, painted by John Inigo Richards, can be viewed at Daniel Hunt Gallery in London and is a slightly naive painting which appears to have grown around an architectural perspective of the house.  It gives the viewer the impression of being let in on a secret world of beauty and leisure.  The house was originally built in the 1660s by Sir Roger Pratt and had later additions (1720s) and interiors by William Kent, additions that contributed to the mounting debt of the incumbent.

The house was sadly pulled down in the 1770s. All that remains today are a few stately cedars to mark the spot as one wanders along the footpath to enjoy the prospect.  Even the once verdant parkland is covered over with field, its pleasure grounds disappeared beneath the plough and burrows of rabbits.   A pair of large iron gates from the estate were sold to Cambridge and now grace the rear entrance of Trinity College.

Hunting in the grounds of a Horseheath Hall

The farm house depicted below with a few of its barns was a family home.  When I commissioned this painting I gave the artist complete freedom to paint the story he envisioned.  He was armed only with the land survey together with aerial photographs of the house that had been lost to fire in the 1970s.  The composition diminishes the house, subjugating it to its land.  It was actually a very large building, a typical farm house of its time with wide sheltering porches and large, simple rooms.  The artist's view was that the house was submissive to the land, hostage to the vagaries of the weather, the fate of farming, and the eventual fire that would return the building to the earth.  He painted a tear in a window nodding to the loss to the family.  Ironically its demise came at a time of prosperity, its loss due to careless painters working on its exterior.  This house stood for only two hundred years, but the thousands of acres around it are still farmed.  The miles of whitewashed fences once painted annually are gone.  The enormous timber barns, all vanished.  The enormous elms that once lined the mile long drive a receding memory.

 Farm, painted by David Moore Smith

What these pictures share is an idealised vision of something, a moment in time captured for the viewer, a moment that has long passed. Either the owners fell into debt so the houses had to be sold, or they chose to move to a more hospitable or indeed fashionable environment. What will pictures like these of contemporary houses look like to us in the future? Will we long for the past when we view them? Will the hopes and aspirations of the owners shine through, or will the devastation that befell these examples be apparent?

Eliza Pinckney and the Indigo Trail

As Lieutenant Governor of Antigua, Colonel George Lucas must have had every intention of setting up one of his sons to run his three plantations in the American colonies. He could not have imagined that his sixteen year old daughter, educated in England with French, drawing and music, would ever need to draw upon botany, her best loved subject, to run the family’s plantations upon the death of his wife and his recall to Antigua during the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

"I beg here to acknowledge particularly my obligation to you (father) for the pains and money laid out in my education, which I esteem a more valuable fortune than any you could have given me, as I hope it will tend to make me happy thru my future life, and those in whom I am most nearly concerned" (Pinckney, xi)

Whatever her schooling prepared her for, it certainly would not have been the challenges of caring for a large slave population in a brutal climate, mortgaged plantations, crop failures, and hostilities abounding from all sides, all whilst endeavouring to maintain a genteel facade.

Despite her tender age and deep longing to return to English society, she plunged in to the life of a plantation owner, experimenting with many different crops including silk, figs, flax, and hemp.

This dress was woven out of silk from the Pinckney plantation and made for Eliza Pinckney in London
whilst the family were in residence there.

By 1738 she managed to grow a modestly successful crop of the notoriously difficult to cultivate indigo. Her hope was to circumvent the French, who heavily taxed the crop they grew in the West Indies, and to provide the English textile industry with this highly sought after deep blue purple dye.

Used since ancient times, indigo was introduced to England by a wealthy secular community for ink, paint, and cloth dyeing. It was a costly and superior alternative to European woad. Despite sabotage from her island competitors, Eliza proved so successful at developing this labour intensive crop that by the 1740s indigo accounted for over a third of the colony’s exports and was successfully cultivated on various plantations, with her help and support, throughout the South Carolina Sea Islands.

This late eighteenth century resist printed indigo American quilt was pictured in Florence Petit's book "America's Indigo Blues" and is now being sold for a substantial amount by an American dealer.  It is hard to imagine now but the making of this quilt may have taken as much as six months and used an amount of indigo more pricey than gold

Perhaps because of her independence she was at liberty to entertain Charles Pinckney as a suitor, and was married to the widower, who helped her maintain her interests in their plantations, numbering seven in total. They returned to England to Ripley in Surrey to live in 1753, planning to stay for at least the tenure of her two sons’ educations. Alas these plans were cut short as the war with France hastened her husband’s return to the Carolinas to protect their financial interests.

Upon their return he was immediately struck with fever and died, leaving Eliza largely friendless, her family far away in the Islands and her two sons in England, in debt with the plantations that had been run down in their absence, her hopes of returning to England dashed.

The spire of St. Philip's, Charleston, est. 1680 is one of the oldest surviving and continually in use Anglican churches in North America. Photo taken near Charles Pinckney's grave.

Although she maintained a lifelong correspondence with her English friends, modestly stating in many letters how her main entertainments were her books and a few neighbours, there was no turning back and she pressed forward, working tirelessly to promote her sons in the new colonial society and hold on to whatever property remained. Her sons eventually returned from England, her son Thomas eventually becoming the American Minister to Britain. Her powerful friends included George Washington, who would be her guest at Hampton Plantation in 1792 just before her death.

Hampton Plantation, 35 miles west of Charleston, SC where Eliza Pinckney spent her later years.
The Adams style portico was added in honour of George Washington's visit, hero of the revolutionary war that destroyed her crops and her livelihood.

Holiday Greetings

December is a month where normally sensible people begin to talk too fast, drive too fast and become unaccountably irritable at the slightest provocation.  As a child I adored the magic of Christmas.  I was an only child with adoring mother, aunts, and a grandmother who managed to effortlessly create incredible magic for the holidays, all month long.  She smiled and sang from the moment she rose in the morning until the moment she fell asleep with her spectacles on late at night from sheer contentment and exhaustion.

I wish I could say that my household is that serene and beautiful.  It is not.  But I do believe in the magic of the season and the opportunities it provides to draw people together.  After fifteen years of my husband grumbling I think he finally believes it too… Whatever you believe, the holiday season represents a time of going from the darkness back into the light, a time where things are magically transformed, a time of rebirth.

Our modest gift to all of you is to share some favourite images from our archives of this season of blessings, splendour, generosity of spirit and memories…  Thank you for supporting us in every way throughout 2013.  We wish all of our readers peace and joy through the holidays and beyond.

Some of our accessories on display at a recent fundraiser.
Who could resist a winter jasmine candle finished with our handmade
passementerie and fabrics or silk satin lined faux fur bags...

My good fortune at viewing this one off piece by Sophie & Georgie
Art Furniture at Serena Morton's new gallery in Notting Hill

A mammoth Chihuly at Halcyon London.  Must find it the perfect hall...

The back hall at Christmas

This Rock Crystal Ewer, circa 1000-1050, on display
at the V&A was carved out of a single piece of stone and
once covered with gold mounts and other precious things. I long for it...

What a whimsical way to transform screening and security in Mayfair

Yeoman proudly modelling our silk velvet
Boleyn in his summer grazing

The church of St Jason and St Sosipatros, a Byzantine survivor
just outside of Corfu town in Garitsa

The Nativity by Conrad von Soest (1403)

Fragments of frescos at the church of St Jason and St Sosipatros

Epitaphiou at St Jason and St Sosipatros

St Philip's church spire Charleston SC, USA, a crisp winter's day

Another fantastic miracle of construction!
My son Hugo's snowmen representing each member of the family!

Christmas tree awash with pink camellias.
Although they only lasted three days it was worth it.

Robert and Renée with Killian-Dawson's Silbury linen in the background.  

Client Contractor Relationships - creating a great rapport with your builder

One of the most painful sights in our business is watching a beautiful renovation or construction project degenerate into an acrimonious dispute between the client and their builder or contractor. Sadly, it happens all too often; as the interior designers we often find ourselves caught in the middle.

Whilst it's uncomfortable to be in this position, it does mean that we are often the one party who can see all sides of the picture. With this in mind, we thought we'd suggest some steps clients and builders can both take to minimise the chances of going down this road. After all, stress and anxiety aside, wouldn't you rather spend the last £10,000 in your budget on an exquisite sculpture, a pair of antique lamps or hand embroidered cushions than a series of last minute changes or even worse, increasingly acrimonious solicitors letters?

Restraint of pen and tongue could leave room in the purse for this
powerful sculpture in copper repoussé by Robert Kuo

We'll start by looking at things from the perspective of the contractor. According to Simon Lewis, Managing Director of building contractor RW Armstrong, "the primary reason that a relationship breaks down between a contractor and a client is a lack of meaningful communication".

Now is the time, before you've embarked upon the project and while everyone is still on friendly terms, to set out the ground rules, to ask the tough questions, to have the potentially difficult conversations. If you can set out both parties' expectations in writing and stick to them, so much the better.

By far the biggest bugbear of the contractors we've spoken to is a lackadaisical attitude amongst clients towards timing. In the words of Simon Lewis, "there is a lack of understanding of the importance of making firm decisions in good time. The contractor quite often needs information weeks, sometimes as much as six months, in advance of the materials ever being needed on site."

For example, you may think you don't need to settle on a precise stone, wood or carpet flooring until the three week lead time the supplier needs for delivery and installation, but the thickness of the material you choose will have a direct impact on the thickness of the concrete screed beneath, or possibly even the cabinetry.

Worse, by far, than the client who won't make timely decisions is the one who constantly changes their mind. Not only does it cause mayhem with the contractor and subcontractors, as well as unnecessary expense, it is deeply depressing for craftsmen who have to rip out work they have laboured over and start again. As for your chance of remaining on schedule, forget it.

Remember, it's not just you who is being affected by the resulting delays. Subcontractors and craftsmen have been scheduled in, and they may well have turned down other jobs only to find themselves kicking their heels as a result of the client's vacillation.  The client may then be surprised and hurt when they turn up on site and detect a slightly frosty atmosphere.

A clear vision, well planned and
provided for equals vibrant,
on-time on-budget results

On the subject of cost, there will almost certainly be a spread between the tenders clients receive from different contractors. Clients should resist the temptation to go for the cheapest or take the safe option and plunk for the one in the middle, and probe a little further. There are many variables that could explain the spread. A firm might have higher overheads, but this could include specialists with long experience who will predict problems and come up with solutions, and consequently the quality of the work will be higher, last longer and have a knock on effect on the morale on site. A firm may be more established, or have good relationships with planners and inspectors that will make the project progress through the various stages more smoothly.

When comparing quotes, some of the most important detective work for the client involves going over each line item in the Scope of Work document. Nowhere is the devil in the detail more than here. It's no good saying Builder X's quote is £50,000 less than Builder Y's and dismissing Y out of hand. Where has Builder X managed to shave that £50k? What corners has he cut to come in so low? Does the specification for bathroom tiles, for instance, or cornicing and cabinetry, seem suspiciously reasonable? If so, he may have found you a great bargain, but equally his expectations about the quality of the fit in your home may be significantly out of line with yours. Ask questions. Probe further before you make a decision, not after. Don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of hearing what you want to hear and tuning out the rest.

So often, clients have come to us excited about creating their dream bathroom, primed up to tour the marble yards, showing us pages ripped out of World of Interiors or a House & Garden feature on some new state of the art Swedish taps. Only when they tell us how much they or their builder have/has allowed for these items do we see their faces drop when we tell them this will extend to the type of sanitary ware more usually associated with the lavatories of a fast food restaurant. Or the taps are perfectly in budget until you allow for the ID (interior dimensions) difference in the fittings and the standard UK pipes.  As ever, it's about communicating your desires and expectations clearly and timely.

Meticulous planning results in a no compromise finish

Clients can all too easily get overwhelmed when a contractor starts throwing information at them and demanding decisions on all manner of items that according to one contractor, "they haven't even begun to think about". What kind of electric switches do you want?  What lighting for the bathroom? Will you be having a hand held shower, a rainforest head, or a spa shower? A good interior designer with their years of experience and vast resources will guide clients through the process.  Sadly it is often at this late stage we are approached by clients pulling their hair out. Really, we'd have preferred to have had the conversations six months earlier whilst the client was just beginning to choose their team and in that luscious creative cocoon phase where anything really is possible; but better late than not at all. Decisions made in a rush are generally ones the client will come to regret, where they are more likely to want to change their minds, and where ultimately they will go over budget.  Why not spend the money getting what one really desires in the first place instead of on variance orders?

Next time, we'll be looking at the relationship from the perspective of the client and asking what contractors and project managers can do to see a project from the client's perspective...



 

Interiors - to conserve or restore?

Continuing our topic of Conservation vs Restoration, there is a mind boggling amount of information and misinformation widely available online, through television series, magazines and educational facilities.  Where conservation is mostly about repair, maintaining and protecting what is already there, restoration is more about making what's old new again, and perhaps even stamping a fresh identity onto a building or a room.

Photo of Church Farm House, Hampshire, courtesy of Savills

What a conservationist might see when sweeping up the gravel drive of a 17th century farmhouse is evidence of brick repaired with cement, a damp course inserted and interfering with the house's breathability.  Or perhaps lead flashing sealed with mastic.  Or a perfect corner on an interior wall that is sure to be lined with a modern metal corner.  There is a damp patch repaired also with concrete near the front door in the entry hall that will need to be scooped out gently and refilled with lime plaster, acrylic paint peeling in the front hall near the skirting, a upvc window in the scullery that is affecting the breathability of the house... the list goes on.

What would a builder more attuned to clients who show him the latest issue of Architectural Digest see in the same building?  An opportunity to knock something down and start again perhaps?  Or to open up all the interior rooms, to treat the crumbling plaster with a dose of plaster board and a gypsum scrim coat to devise a more rational spot for a cloakroom?  To install warm double glazing at the back of the house where it may be allowed?  To chip off all the old lime plaster because a bit was crumbling and start again with gypsum, so much cheaper and easier with the new wiring going in...  and so it goes.

Every person who looks at a house will see it in a different way.  Most can no longer claim total ignorance of traditional building methods as television programmes feature everything from plasterers to medieval manor houses and thatchers, with everything in between and across all time lines.   I am the sort of person who becomes a quivering lovesick wreck when I see an abandoned building.  And when I move into a house I like to rough it and gradually repair, add, change, as seems necessary and appropriate.  I believe it takes time to get to know a house, its own quirks, wishes, desires, personality, just like a person.  Act too quickly and important messages may be lost or ignored.

Even with a comprehensive scheme for regenerating a listed or just ancient building and respecting the original fabric, many factors, such as budget, time, planning, covenanting, building regulations and conservation issues all come into play.

When, for example, we wished to turn a redundant building attached to our house into a library that was not listed but was in a conservation area, we painstakingly installed period appropriate hand blown leaded lights and wrought iron hardware made by the local blacksmith - we were praised by the conservation officer for respecting the nature of the main building but not slavishly copying what was already there.  However, we were then rebuked by the building regs officer who demanded double glazing and windows that opened to the front.  They would not be secure, but he said this was of no importance to my young family.  What was paramount was the consideration that a handicapped person may buy my home in future and need to get out these windows if there was a fire!

I may wish to repair each of the 49 sash windows in a Georgian old rectory, only to find that my plans clash with my green energy goals.  Do I put in secondary glazing and interlined curtains and hope for the best?  In many cases this is a perfect solution - but does it offend my aesthetic sense to have secondary glazing panels up in Autumn not coming off until Spring gently restores the temperature?

One architect we worked with in Charleston came up with an ingenious - although admittedly costly - solution for his own new house.  Secondary sash windows.  Difficult to clean but beautiful.  Sadly local planners no longer treat this as an acceptable solution, so it could not be done in a new building.

Architect Andrew Gould's House built in vernacular style  with double sash windows
(interior and colour consultation by Killian-Dawson)

...It is for all these buildings, therefore, of all times and styles, that we plead, and call upon those who have to deal with them, to put Protection in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaky roof by such means as are obviously meant for support or covering, and show no pretence of other art, and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands; if it has become inconvenient for its present use, to raise another building rather than alter or enlarge the old one; in fine to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying... William Morris, part of the manifesto of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB)

When television programmes bombard us with exciting new kitchens and clean modern, dust free interiors produced as rabbits from the hats of restoration, the above can seem harsh, indeed impossible to achieve, not to mention limiting our creative capacities and some would say, a building's chance for survival.  After all, isn't a building a sort of organism that is an extension of each time it in, its use changing, its looks changing as each generation leaves it's mark?

I do not have the answers but I do believe it is vital to consider each thing we do to an old building very carefully before attacking it with sledgehammers and acid, and a large team of builders with power tools, serving up contemporary to suit our current view of what we see in magazines and shop windows, or even other friends' kitchens.  Fashion continually alters.  If I walk into an old rectory and find I have been duped and the interior is a modern spotlit, smooth walled chrome and stainless steel mass complete with smart systems, I must confess I feel shocked and sometimes a bit cheated.   The fantasy of living in an old building is not the same as the reality.  Sometimes the inhabitants would be better served to spread their wings and build something new.   Buildings once altered cannot be returned to their previous state, achieved only through time.  We must be careful not to destroy what we fall in love with.