Behind the scenes at
WOW!HOUSE
Discover the plans for two hotly anticipated rooms in Design Centre Chelsea Harbour’s first designer showhouse
T
his summer (1 June to 1 July), Design Centre Chelsea Harbour is opening the doors to WOW!house – its first showhouse featuring 20 rooms created by leading interior designers together with renowned makers and design houses. With collaborations such as the Julian Chichester Library by Turner Pocock; the Schumacher Garden Room by CampbellRey; and the Morris & Co Courtyard Bedroom by Brandon Schubert – as well
as rooms by Paolo Moschino and Phillip Vergeylen, Stephanie Barba Mendoza and Joanna Plant, among others – the showhouse will offer an immersive opportunity to see the work of world-class designers first-hand. We have been given an exclusive preview of two of the most anticipated rooms – the GP & J Baker morning room by Rita Konig, and the Colefax and Fowler drawing room by Emma Burns and Philip Hooper of Sybil Colefax & John Fowler.
Interior designer Rita Konig
GP & J BAKER MORNING ROOM BY RITA KONIG The Morning Room at Wow!house will be a smart sitting room in which to enjoy the day’s early rays, looking out to the garden. Designer Rita Konig has brought together a scheme using fabrics from GP & J Baker to offer a beautiful link to the outdoors. Konig has a very personal connection to the hero fabric, Ferns, which will be used to cover the walls as well as for the curtains. “It was easy to find the fabric I wanted to use for my room at the Wow!house,” she says. “The Fern pattern has been a lifelong favourite of mine. My mother [Nina Campbell] used it in one of my favourite rooms of hers from the ’80s.” In a lovely moment of serendipity, when Konig recalled this beloved chintz, managing and creative director of GP & J Baker, Ann Grafton, was able to reveal the team had been trialling the heritage design as an embroidery. “I showed her a new embroidery version of this cherished design when she was visiting our design studio,” she explains, “and it was love at first sight, and perfect for the morning room.” Grafton adds that the original design was created in 1935 as a chintz printed on linen and how in its new guise “the design has been embroidered in the same scale onto a rich herringbone ground cloth, in a soft eau de nil yarn giving the new fabric
82 THE ENGLISH HOME
ABOVE Two of the fabrics included in Rita Konig’s scheme. From left: Aslin, Charcoal, £80 a metre, Threads at GP & J Baker; Arley Print (right), Ivy, £335 a metre, Lee Jofa at GP & J Baker BELOW Konig has curated a selection of fabrics from across the brands at GP & J Baker for the Wow!house morning room.
ABOVE Konig’s sketch for the morning room design. RIGHT Ferns embroidered fabric is a new interpretation of a classic GP & J Baker design. Ferns, Verdigris, £195 a metre, GP & J Baker
