First act

seLLa co-founder tatJana von steIn discusses bringing a classically European sensibility to interior design and the launch of her first furniture collection.

On the first floor of a double-fronted, Grade II listed former schoolhouse on a leafy road in Islington, Tatjana von Stein is going for a sense of European elegance. “Sumptuous flare with a modernist feel. That’s where I feel very at home,” she says.

Against a backdrop of pale yellow walls and thick green carpet sits some seating, a few tables and a bar cabinet. This furniture, with its rounded edges, sleek lines and rich upholstery comprises von Stein’s new collection. Called Mise en Scène (“setting the stage” in French), it’s the first collection under her own name.

Why would an interior designer who is having her biggest year of commercial project launches – a hotel in Zurich, another south of London, a big north London workspace and a private members’ club in Mallorca – bother with the effort of super-high-end furniture?

Because it’s a great calling card for clients, she says. Her eye is firmly set on appealing to more deeppocketed home owners and residential interior designers, including those in the US and Continental Europe – while still considering the more boutique approach increasingly taken in commercial spaces, where designers opt for individual pieces from smaller studios, versus mega-brands. “The furniture will have its own life and that will attract clients,” she says, and then, of course, Sella will be able to specify them in its own projects. It has also given von Stein the chance to showcase her own creative expression (this time, she’s the client), and has meant she can collaborate with top-of-their-game craftspeople in a way that is rarely possible on traditional hospitality budgets.

Mise en Scène’s bar cabinet, sectional curved sofa, lounge chair, three wooden tables – dining, coffee and side – and silk-panelled screen with rotating panels will be made by France’s “finest artisans”, she says, including Pierre Noire. A virtuoso of wood crafting, Noire is part of the restoration group Aurige, a collective of heritage conservators and expert artisans including stonemasons, fresco painters and sculptors, some who have worked on the restoration of Paris’ Notre-Dame.

For the collection, she drew inspiration from the performing arts and the shapes of dancer’s bodies as they move across the stage. She was also influenced by the 2021 exhibition of the works of the late Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi at London’s Barbican (which featured Noguchi’s collaborations with the dancer Martha Graham). Hence the elegant legs on the rectangular oak dining table. The pieces’ European roots are evident or suggested in the mirrored surfaces, high-gloss lacquer finishes, brushed-steel spinal inserts and colour palette of green, rust and golden yellow in a variety of rich textures.

Crafted as potential heirlooms, the numbered pieces range from £11,320 for the coffee table to £40,530 for the bar unit. Von Stein talks of “the romance of the longevity of these furniture pieces.”

By reclaiming design, von Stein means “owning a design narrative from start to finish and getting the opportunity to work with remarkable craftsmen from a quality and a positive impact standpoint; designing a furniture collection that withstands the test of time.”

Making these items in France makes sense culturally to von Stein, who is half-French, half-German. It also gets around the difficulties of shifting products to and from the UK since Brexit. “We have quite a lot of international projects, it helps if furniture is coming straight from (continental) Europe.” Though she points out that “there are amazing British craftspeople.”

The continent isn’t just her heritage, it informs her aesthetic. “I’m a bit more European in style, that reflects the clients we attract.”

It’s ten years since von Stein first found herself in the interior design world. After completing a university degree in psychology, she went into set design, working on fashion shows and short films. Her first interior design client came by chance in 2013, when a friend introduced her to the founder of retail-restaurant-concept destination, Clerkenwell London. “I was dropped in the deep end,” she says, “we created an experience there.”

Then three years later she founded Sella Concept (now Sella) as a London-based interior architecture studio with her partner Gayle Noonan. With Clerkenwell London as their calling card, von Stein cold-called the owners of the De Beauvoir complex in Islington, and the studio was given the job of designing the ground floor area of the shared workspace set-up, De Beauvoir Block. This was good timing, as, “It was the beginning of the workspacehospitality culture,” she says.

Image on prevIous page: Tatjana von Stein opposIte page: The Mise en Scene dining table | cleMente vergArA aBove Image:

The sectional sofa in golden yellow

Since then, she has built the team up to nine people, including one from Foster and Partners, and another from Conran and Partners. And while her aspiration is not to become a huge agency, “I’m sure we’ll get a few more people.” In the meantime, she’s surrounded herself with “strong technical people”, to balance with her own intuition.

She contrasts hospitality with residential, saying the former “is never just a decorative job, it’s underpinned by operations and a huge amount of regulation. I look at the spaces in terms of how you experience them,” she says, and focuses on layouts and zoning, before applying design elements.

The make-up of her team has allowed her to take on big projects, like four floors of London offices for Dice, a global mobile ticketing platform, back in De

Beauvoir; and the 80-bedroom Locke Hotel in Zurich – her biggest project to date in scale; also Mallorca’s first members’ club Làlia; and Birch Selsdon hotel and members’ club in Croydon, where Sella did the signature restaurant and cocktail bar and revived the lido. “It’s a big crescendo year for us,” thanks to a post-COVID glut of delayed openings and “one thing leading to another”. All four of these commercial projects are being unveiled later this year – Birch Selsdon and Dice likely followed by Locke Hotel and Làlia.

She describes Locke Hotel as a juxtaposition between “a modernist approach due to the building and the heritage in Zurich with a more Swiss Grand Riviera style you find by the lake – modernist but indulgent.” Meanwhile, Dice is “a stainless-steel haven, a nod to the late Italian architect and designer, Gae Aulenti”. Làlia will be “artisanal but sexy”; and at Birch Selsdon (p68) she is “juxtaposing an earthy, rewilding project with the finesse and grandeur of the building’s heritage”. Here, the 19th-century mansion has been remodelled by interior design and architecture studio A-nrd and Sella, and the rewilding of the golf course is being led by furniture designer Sebastian Cox.

As well as sourcing vintage pieces for these projects and commissioning others from local craftspeople, since 2019, Sella specified some of its own furniture. Its debut range was a series of stools featuring curvaceous forms inspired by the bathers at Hampstead Heath’s Ladies’ Pond. That experience has given von Stein the craft learning that informed Mise en Scène.

While these chunky projects must take plenty of thought-process and effort, von Stein still has an eye on her furniture collection. “I would love to add a desk. I woke up having dreamt of it.” She’d also like to add a few more key pieces such as a smaller armchair, and maybe different treatments for the lacquer doors of the bar cabinet. Then she’ll start on the second collection. She already has a clear concept idea for that, but she’s keeping it under wraps for the moment. In the meantime, Sella’s four major unveilings this year are likely to push the studio even further into the limelight.

A rather heated debate ensued at a recent panel discussion, hosted by our very own Harry McKinley, on the topic of designing for TikTok. After the Instagram moment, apparently this is the next frontier design should be aiming for. Most of the audience was probably beyond TikTok age – with the exception of a few intrepid young-at-hearts. But is it really about TikTok or whatever the next thing might be once too many old people have joined in and spoilt the fun?

Given we (and all the big brands) are onto it by now, it is probably already passé. This is where the real question comes in: should we be designing for any particular platform given how elusive they are?

Any design project typically takes a long time; hotels often many years. If we are working on something that might open in five year’s time, how can we even contemplate designing to the latest platform, as it likely doesn’t even exist yet? And are they really that different from each other that a new language needs to be found for each one?

What we are talking about are two things: creating something memorable for our audience and engaging with them in a visual language they relate to, while getting as much exposure as we possibly can. But social media is also about something completely different: it is about projecting a certain angle of ourselves, about creating our own narrative and being seen to live our best lives. So ultimately – and bluntly – it is about compelling us to share with others.