8 May 22, 2022The Sunday TimesHome
C
oming up the path
at Kemps House, a
glorious 17th-
century manor in
Balcombe, West
Sussex, it’s hard to imagine a
more bucolic setting. It’s
stunning — but what to do
when the rooms in your
country pad are looking,
well, a little tired?
The house is home to Alex
Willcock, 58, the co-founder of
the furniture company Maker
& Son, which he runs with his
son Felix Conran, 27, who took
the surname of his late
grandfather Sir Terence. It has
also served as the brand’s
headquarters and showroom.
“We’ve lived here as a family
for 17 years. The house does
go through various
transformations, but I was so
intrigued to see what it’d be
like with another person’s eyes
over the place,” Willcock says.
Enter a colour consultancy
session with Joa Studholme,
Farrow & Ball’s colour curator
and the mastermind behind
many of the paint brand’s
beloved shades. Studholme
was given carte blanche tospruce up the porch, living
room, stairs and landing while
maintaining reverence for the
building. Willcock’s 18-year-
old daughter, Song, had a
clearer idea of what she might
like in her bedroom.
Willcock and Studholme
“immediately clicked”. “Joa
had a really good look around
and a chat to understand how
each room is used. We had a
couple of hours together and
she had a chat with Song as
well. There’s something so
extraordinarily refreshing
about just handing everything
over to someone,” he says.
Studholme wanted to echo
the verdant shades of the trees
and topiary path leading to the
house in her colour choices
on the ground floor. She
picked the dramatic dark
Chine Green, from the Archive
Collection, for the porch.
“Anything that comes after it
feels much lighter. It meant
that I could use Treron [a
dark grey-green] in the living
room and it wouldn’t feel too
dark because you’ve passed
through a darker element
into it.”IS THIS THE BEST FARROW
A 17th-century manor needed
TLC. Who do you call? The
posh paint company’s colour
curator. By Victoria Brzezinski
BEFORE AFTER
The living room, which is in
the centre of the house, is
unusual in having five points
of access from the rest of the
house. It is not a dark room
but it’s not full of light either.
“Treron felt like exactly the
right colour for the space. If it
had been a sunny room I
would never have used that
colour. I’m a great believer in
not fighting nature — if a room
is light, keep it light. And I
would never paint a dark
hallway in a bright white,”
Studholme says.
Willcock calls it “genuinely
transformative. Her choice
of colours works so well. I
learnt a lot and I feel inspired.”
One of his favourite touches
was Studholme’s suggestion
to paint the inside of the built-
in bookshelf in Wet Sand,
a caramel hue from the
Archive Collection. Studholme
says: “It’s a lovely, quirky
thing to do, which just makes
you smile.”
On the stairs and landing
leading to Song’s room
Studholme has used French
Gray — a lighter version of
Treron — so it feels seamlessbetween the spaces. “The
colours I used had a
traditional feel and a green
undertone, rather than
using clean, hard, bright
colours,” she says.
Arguably the most
successful makeover of the
house is Song’s bedroom,
which originally had white
walls, a velvet teal bed and
duck egg-blue sofa (both
Maker & Son prototypes), and
“hideous Ikea wardrobes and
a princess chandelier that
Song has had since she was
about three,” Willcock says.
It has been transformed
with sunny yellow walls and
the carpet was ripped up and
the floorboards painted a
dusky pink — a chic rhubarb
and custard medley. Song, a
first-year French and
philosophy student at Trinity
College Dublin, says: “Since I
started spending half the time
here and half the time with my
mum [the art director Charlie
Kinsman] in Hampshire, we
never set the time aside to
make it more personal. The
room was a mishmash
of things and it didn’t reallyTop left: Alex
Willcock and his
daughter, Song.
Above: Song on
a Maker & Son
chair in her new
room. Clockwise
from top right:
the living room,
now painted in
Treron; the
hallway, painted
in French Gray;
the living room,
with window
frames painted in
Wimborne WhiteJACK BOWMAN; JAMES MERRELL