Great wall of china

Once considered fusty and old-fashioned, wall-hung decorative plates are back on trend, says Goodwood’s interior designer Cindy Leveson

Words byGill Morgan

Cindy Leveson is the woman responsible for Goodwood’s interior design. Over the past two decades she has refurbished the grand rooms of the main house, decorated The Kennels and Hound Lodge, and created the wonderfully eclectic look of the restaurant, Farmer, Butcher, Chef. Now she is turning her attention to possibly the biggest challenge of all: bringing her pitch-perfect interpretation of updated country house elegance – with just the right dash of Goodwood quirk – to The Goodwood Hotel.

The job is not without its challenges. It's one thing decorating ten bedrooms in Hound Lodge, it’s quite another ensuring that all 91 bedrooms at the hotel feel quintessentially “Goodwood”. Leveson was determined that each bedroom would be unique, so she has mixed antique pieces in with the other furniture and added a touch of chintz to each room. But it was the artwork for the rooms that threatened to stump her. Usually Leveson uses Goodwood photographs and prints in her schemes, but she realised that with so many rooms, "I was running out of pictures that were Goodwood-related.” Around the same time that she was working on her initial ideas, she started collecting antique plates, especially ones with a floral or rural feel. And so she found her perfect solution: she decided to use plates in small collections in each of the bedrooms. “The great thing is that they’re all different, all originals, so it means that every room is unique. I find them everywhere,” Leveson says. “Auctions, junk shops, eBay, you name it.”

It became popular to hang plates decoratively in the home from the 18th century onwards. In country houses, the scenes depicted are often of flora and fauna or rural tableaux, which works perfectly in the Goodwood Hotel redecoration, as it will have a strongly garden-inspired theme. In more recent times, wall plates had become rather old-hat, a bit “granny”, but Leveson is a past master at unearthing an old tradition or object and reworking it to fit into a contemporary scheme. Since she had her clever idea, she’s noticed that plate collections, often mixing old and new, are having a bit of moment. “I’m suddenly seeing them in lots of cool places,” she says.

The meeting rooms in the hotel have also been entirely remodelled as part of the first phase of the renovation and will now feel very much a continuation of the Goodwood aesthetic, with handsome fireplaces, wood panelling and unique pieces of furniture. Leveson sets herself a tough task, however as she insists all the artworks must be relevant to the estate: “Oh yes, I’m always on the look-out, but I’m very strict: it has to relate to the right part of Sussex, or the estate, or the family,” she says. The hunt goes on.

Above: Cindy Leveson's sketch for one of the hotel's new bedrooms, complete with wall plate display