Interior values

By Antonia Stewart (Lazenby, 1994)

Antonia Stewart

As I write we are in week four of lockdown. Never before have we spent so much uninterrupted time with our own families. With ourselves. In our own homes. Rumour has it that with time on our hands – and assuming that you don’t have small children – cupboards are being opened and sorted, bursting drawers and wardrobes are being culled and homes are being tidied and spring cleaned to within an inch of their lives! As part of this purge, we are analysing our personal spaces – making lists of things that need mending, furniture that needs replacing or reupholstering, artwork that needs buying. We are looking at our rooms and realising that they now have different purposes to the ones we originally set out for them: kitchens have become multi-hubs for cooking, socialising, art, homeschooling, mess…... spare bedrooms and dining rooms are now offices; children too – now older – are desperate to update their bedrooms and create their own spaces…….they too are tired of their old schemes.

Joinery detail from a library recently completed and installed by Worcestershire company Joinery Classics. The client requested a sloping bookrest to be able to stand to read.

..now with an additional eye to sustainability, perhaps more than ever we could consider supporting our marvellous British industries.

Left: Oxfordshire decorative artist and muralist Sarah Blomfield (www.sarahblomfield.com) specialises in hand painted lampshades. This is a pair of beautiful lampshades that she made for me recently to go over the pool table in a Party Barn where she used Moroccan motifs around the base of the shades in blues to match the speed cloth on the table below.

As we start to think about executing our updates, now with an additional eye to sustainability, perhaps more than ever we could consider supporting our marvellous British industries that have taken such a beating recently through no fault of their own. ‘Buying British’ has always been close to my heart, partly because I am fascinated by manufacturing and love nothing more than a visit to a factory or a workshop to see how things are made, but also because where better to start than at home? The UK is at the forefront of design in all forms; furniture, textile and carpet manufacturers are using recycled raw materials, metals and plastics in their processes, carbon emissions are

being off-set with tree-planting programmes, clients can now take virtual tours through their soon-to-be-built projects through VR goggles, Dyson fans can cool you with purified air free of gases, pollutants and allergens, Norman Foster has a team in his London office who are working out how to build on the Moon…

And yet, underpinning all these latest advances is our rich (British) history of manufacture and, ironically, our desire to incorporate this into our homes too. Age-old industries are having a terrific resurgence as we look for truth and honesty in our interiors and we push back against cheap imports and question how much stuff we really need. Many of these skills are being practised in small studios throughout the countryside with artists and craftspeople producing individual items with love, rather than profit, at the heart of their manufacturing process.

I found a fabulous wallpaper from Welsh company Knowles and Christou (www. knowles-christou.com) that I wanted to use in the master bedroom in this Oxfordshire project to paper up and into the A frame ceiling. I wanted to keep the room light and bright and to make the most of the natural beam colour and the views out of the three windows. At that time, Knowles and Christou did not produce this paper in a green colour-way. However, as they print to order from their own workshop in Wales, we were able to develop a bespoke fresh apple green for our scheme. Now that green is one of their standard colours for this collection.

Block printing, for example, has had a terrific resurgence in the last couple of years with artists such as Molly Mahon (www.mollymahon.com) bringing colour and pattern to us from the table in her garden studio in Sussex. Charlotte from CLJ Home (www.cljhome.com) brings a ‘refreshingly disruptive aesthetic’ into our homes supplying fabrics that she has hand dyed using non-toxic dyes and pigments. A look at her instagram finds her dyeing linens with bio waste: Nordic spruce pine cones, avocado or daffodils; the results are brilliant. Lewis & Wood (www.lewisandwood.co.uk) – based in Stroud, have spent twenty-five years bringing out dozens of beautiful wallpaper and fabric designs. Ros Byam Shaw, author of the book English Eccentric, describes their initial “determination to use British talent and manufacturing, and to be adventurous and experimental.” Despite being a small company, Lewis and Wood’s output is both distinctive and breathtakingly beautiful – the reason why I, and many other designers, come back to them again and again for our projects. Another favourite is Soane Britain (www.soane.co.uk) – a furniture, lighting and fabric company widely celebrated for the pieces it makes in the UK. Lulu Lytle, its co-founder, bravely rescued the country’s last remaining rattan workshop from administration in 2011 and, with her new designs, has now breathed life back into this industry and the skills of the experienced weavers who were about to be let go.

CLJ Home’s “slow design” as she experiments dyeing with eucalyptus. The results were two very different colours: after 1 hour in the dye bath the fabric turned a soft pink, left overnight fabric from the same batch went a light mustard colour.

We designed these hand painted wall tiles for a project in London with Douglas Watson Studio (www.douglaswatsonstudio.uk) – a small company, based near Henley-on-Thames, that produces fine, handmade contemporary and traditional ceramic tiles based on traditional techniques. Our client wanted to use blue and white tiles following a trip to Portugal where she had seen the vernacular antique azulejos – and so we incorporated this idea with game larder imagery.

There is one other thing recent events have thrown a spotlight on, the way in which all countries have become dependent on global supply chains. A 98% complete product manufactured in one country may be completely useless without that critical part from another. As the crisis continues and our economic situations worsen, major UK companies are already looking at ways to move manufacturing back 100% ‘on-shore’. Self-sufficiency will give companies more oversight and control of their production processes enabling them to tolerate bumps in the road much better whilst still being able to guarantee quality, delivery and price.

And there it is. The nub of the argument.

There is no question that – for now – buying British is more expensive: minimum wage, business rates, the tariffs on imports, the high costs on export – but, coming back to where I started, why not, why not buy one beautifully made British product that you will love and cherish and whose heritage you are proud of, rather than spending the same amount on several cheaper, less well made items that have come (fully or partially) from further afield? You will have fewer things but not less – and you will also have more space to live. Think what a premium we put on that. For me at least, the warm feeling that I get from knowing that I have supported not just a small company, but a British company too as I press ‘Add to Basket’ is all part of the shopping experience that I want. R

Antonia Stewart (Lazenby, 1994) runs a small but beautiful interior design studio in London. www.antoniastewart.com 0207 622 9539