I saw as a child how historic global trade informed so many designs and patterns – from ceramics or sculpture through to fabrics. I’ve never been one for a purist approach; I’m not sure it’s actually possible without getting very po-faced. ‘How then do you stop an interior becoming an irrational free-for-all?’ I hear you ask. The key to the process is synthesis. It is not about attempting to crib multiple images in our digital age and create an interior like a series of slides.
For me, it is about finding a story and then checking off your decisions along the way against that. When I start working with a client, we spend a good amount of time finding the story of the space. This could be a cottage with the life of some eccentric dowager decanted into it; a set of rooms reworked à la Syrie Maugham for a confirmed bachelor; or a large, 19th-century house long occupied and extended by a single family, encompassing the 1840s, 1900s and 1950s.
I often use multiple sources in my work. These can be diverse – a combination, say, of Verner Panton and James Bidgood. A modernist master and a cult cinematographer obsessed with Victoriana might not seem happy bedfellows, but for me their approach to refracting light off strong colours has an analogy.
A dramatic curtain at Max Hurd’s London house. ‘The original elevator pitch for the house was Oscar Wilde by way of a Brazilian bordello, circa 1900,’ says Max, to which Benedict adds a list of references that include ‘Verner Panton, John Fowler, Nicky Haslam and a good dose of Marlene Dietrich camp’.
Boz Gagovski
I enjoy the dramatic possibility of a space just as much as the practical planning of it. It might be a question of thinking about how I want someone to feel passing through an interior – like Marlene Dietrich emerging through a curtained proscenium arch, instead of simply passing along a landing in a typical north London terrace every morning. Equally painting influences my work, from colour punctuation – a red frame or a turquoise vase – to whole room schemes.
For a current project, we took the colours of René Magritte’s painting La Voix du Silence as the inspiration for our palette, then we started weaving various other stories through it: old wood from a demolished Welsh chapel; coordinating elements of architecture and furniture through a single paint colour that was inspired by a bedroom in a Scottish castle; recalling the view from a doorway of the light falling sideways across a piece of furniture in a medieval house in Cairo.
I do like the intellectual aspects of a design and its sources, but ultimately I would say the key is enjoyment. So really it is about finding that – keeping it light-hearted rather than studied. You want a space to be joyful to occupy and that is what I try and give everyone I work with, finding their story and amplifying and detailing it. As for my own story right now? I hanker for the simplicity of a Scottish bothy, but also give me Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace in Los Angeles any day.
Find Benedict Foley and Daniel Slowik’s new collection of fabrics at nuthalltemple.com
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