The Times Magazine 43studied at John Makepeace’s Parnham House,
a school for craft and woodwork where David
Linley was an alumnus and where Willcock’s
year of ten pupils learnt from a roster of
design luminaries including Sir Norman
Foster and Ettore Sottsass, who would visit to
set projects and critique them. A first task was
understanding how the tool to make a dovetail
was made, not simply learning to dovetail, and
it is here where he met Conran.
After graduating, Willcock was asked
to launch the homeware division of the
Australian fashion brand Country Road, and
he asked Conran to enter into a joint sourcing
agreement. “I was in my mid-twenties, he
would have been fifty-ish, and I never stopped
asking him questions. How did you do that?
How does that work? What’s it like to have
lots of money?” Cue laughter. “AlthoughHome!
Clockwise from this
picture: Borros bentwood
pendant shade; the main
bedroom; the staircase;
Felix Conran; the kitchen