Bricks&Mortar 19
Save&Splurge Splashbacks
For more options visit thetimes.co.ukCompiled by Katrina Burroughs
@Kat_BurroughsU Marlow tiles, 10cm x 10cm, £50 a sq m, tilegiant.co.ukX Plastic
panels,
50cm x
50cm,
£44.86,
wayfair.
co.ukW Brass
panels,
£450 a sq
m, quirky
interiors.
co.uk1
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T
he master woodworker
Hugh Miller is best
known for his museum-
quality furniture, inspired
by Japanese cabinetry.
Last year he launched H Miller
Bros, a bespoke kitchen business,
with his architect brother, Howard.
Hugh Miller’s home is an
apartment in one of the Victorian
townhouses in the Sutton Park area
of Liverpool. He used lockdown to
complete his dream kitchen. “I’m
a workaholic, so I just went full
throttle and it was completed by
mid-April,” he says. The star of the
three-tier design, featuring an extra
upper level of cabinets above head
height, is a 4m-long “truss”, a
ceiling-high architectural elementDecor decoded Fusion cooking
combining open shelves and slatted
screens, where Miller displays
books, ceramics and plants.1
We are wood people. We love
what wood looks like and what
wood represents. It’s the ultimate
intergenerational material. You can
never use what you plant yourself,
and you have to plant to provide
for the next generation. The timber
I used is iroko, which is a tropical
straight-grained wood with a
beautiful burnt-sugar colour. It’s
often used for laboratory worktops
because it’s very resistant to
moisture, chemicals and acid. It is a
guilty pleasure. It’s not scarce, like
teak or mahogany or rosewood, but
it is a tropical timber that grows in
the rainforest, so it’s difficult to
have it certified as sustainable.2
I’m a Japanophile [Miller is a
visiting lecturer at the Osaka
Institute of Technology in Japan].
I’m obsessed with that careful,
intentional crafted simplicity. The
idea is the kitchen is a splice of
Japanese and British design.
You’ve got the engineering-type
articulation of the truss and the
very Japanese partial screening and
open shelves that allow light
through, but delineate space.3
The ladder was probably the
first idea we had. We knew we
wanted to make the kitchen high,
and we love the idea of having a
moveable ladder, more like a library.
We wanted a really special piece
of craftsmanship.4
The cupboard fronts are MDF
panels in School House White
by Farrow & Ball. We wanted this
section to be a bit of a breather
from the richness of the wood.5
The cupboard doors have
hexagonal brass pulls that we
made ourselves in the workshop.6
We didn’t want the kitchen to
be perfectly symmetrical. On
the left-hand side there’s a tall
cupboard, and on the right open
shelves for my ceramics and plants,
tea caddy and copper Hario kettle.
The bowls next to the kettle are
really cheap ceramics from Loft, a
big department store in Japan.7
Beyond the open shelves you
can see the sliding door to the
kitchen, like a Japanese screen,
covered in shoji paper. The same
paper is echoed in square lanterns
within the truss that light the space.
A similar project might cost
£40,000, from hmillerbros.co.uk
Interview by Katrina BurroughsHugh Miller’s
dream kitchen
in his Victorian
apartment was
inspired by Japan
A shepherd hut in the garden could prove to be an
ideal space to work from home. Handcrafted, fully
insulated huts from Plankbridge start at £23,Above: a Scandi-style garden office by Rooms
Outdoor. Below: Tim Denton’s shingle-clad Room
starts at £26,040 and can be customisedSearch for your
best place to live
thetimes.co.uk/bestplacestolivebuy them as meditation spaces,
home gyms or yoga spaces. Now
restaurants, freshly back in business,
are keen to buy the hemispheres for
socially distanced dining and he is busy
taking inquiries from homeowners
seeking an extra dining room in the
garden and, Lyczakowski says, “a place
to sleep under the stars”, £3,227,
hypedome.com. The future of cabins
could be clear, and hemispherical.