Financial Times Weekend 22-23Feb2020

2 ★ FT Weekend 22 February/23 February 2020

House Home

Taking a bath in

Smith’s bathroom

would feel like

splashing around

in Roald Dahl’s

writing shed

Tiles of the

unexpected

I am updating my bathroom, starting

with tiles. The choice is overwhelming,

but I am leaning towards something

bold. The room is very small, so I don’t

want it to be oppressive. What would

you suggest?

Bold tiles in a small bathroom are a

very good thing. A daring design may

feel domineering in a large space, but

in a small room, fearless tiles can shine

without inflicting a migraine.

Your smallest bathroom is the place

in your house in which to have the

most fun. If it is your private

bathroom, give yourself carte blanche

to create your sanctum. If it is a guest

bathroom, it will be used less regularly

— no need to worry about the design

being overbearing, and it should

surprise and amuse your visitors.

What tiles to choose will depend on

your overall idea. Bold is fabulous, but

do you want bold colour or bold

pattern — or both? Bold and graphic, or

painterly and pastoral? Are you

drawing inspiration from a hotel

bathroom in Sorrento that has not been

altered since the 1970s? Or should you

look to Morocco’s geometric designs?

I have written about my love for

Balineum before: this is the London-

based company I turn to for tile

inspiration again and again. It designs

and produces lots of tiles — and I mean

lots: from the Series S range, inspired

by the seaports of the Mediterranean

and handpainted in Italy, to Hanley

Traditional, which are available in 30

glazes and have been mixed by hand to

achieve the perfect blend of pigments.

I particularly love Hanley because the

various shapes (all 22 of them) can be

mixed and matched, meaning the

design possibilities are endless. See

interior designer Tara Craig’s en-suite

bathroom in Chelsea: dusty pink

square and ivory subway tiles with a

thin border of burgundy in between.

Balineum also makes patterned

decorative tiles (Hanley Tube Lined,

available in the same palette), allowing

you to combine plainer traditional

tiles with inlaid borders, and even

decorative “tapestries” set within tiled

walls. I love them all, but my favourites

are those decorated with diamonds,

triangles, diagonal stripes and, of

course, the classic and chic Greek key.

I have used a striking Balineum

black-and-white Greek key design in

the interiors of a Parisian hotel I am

working on: the tiles will sit in a single

line on the walls of the bathrooms

above plain, brightly coloured square

tiles (I like Johnson Tiles’ very

affordable range). Daffodil yellow in

some bathrooms, apple green or

candyfloss pink in others.

Another supplier: Belgium-based

Emery & Cie trades in a style

they describe as “in precarious

balance between baroque and

austerity”. Intriguing. I love their

Faux-Iznik tiles, decorated with

beautifully stylised flowers in shades

of blue and green.

My favourite? The Primula Arborea

(pictured), which features a bold motif

of primroses and comes in fabulously

zany colours: cobalt blue flowers on

an oxblood background, deep orange

on turquoise, shocking pink on olive

green. Emery & Cie has showrooms in

Brussels and Paris and a corner of

architectural-salvage and interior-

design company Retrouvius on

Harrow Road in London.

But for the ultimate in bathroom

luxury, you can forget your special

marbles and super high-tech showers.

I dream of decorating a bathroom with

unique, hand-painted tiles.

Recently, I have been inspired by

a photograph of Maude Smith’s

bathroom in her Victorian townhouse

in Stockwell, south London. Smith,

a set designer, decorator and

dressmaker, painted each tile in her

bathroom with a carnival of living

things: leaves and flowers, ladybirds,

butterflies, beetles and birds. The

effect is charming. Taking a bath in

Smith’s bathroom would feel like

splashing around in Roald Dahl’s

writing shed.

The New Craftsmen, a London

retailer, sells similar-looking hand-

dipped tiles designed by the illustrator

Laura Carlin. They are more African

jungle than soggy British countryside,

but why wouldn’t you want to bathe

with a baboon?

Luke answers readers’ questions on design

and stylish living every week. Email him at

[email protected] and follow him

on Instagram @lukeedwardhall

Luke Edward Hall

Readers’ questions

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House & Home Unlocked

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investment. They contain more than

50,000 documents, some dating back as

far as the Italian renaissance, and Mor-

ris’s own wooden printing blocks for

intricate, handmade wallpapers, which

the company still uses.

Last year was disappointing for

Walker Greenbank, with sales across

the whole group of eight brands down

2 per cent. But Morris & Co was an

exception. Sales were up more than 22

per cent in 2019 compared with the

previous year — and by nearly 30 per

cent in Scandinavia.

“Our new customer is young,” says

Montague. “Morris drew from nature,

which seems to resonate with an [eco-

logically aware] generation.” Its best-

selling design is Strawberry Thief, a

dense repeat pattern of flowers, fruit

and birds, first designed by Morris in

1883 after watching thrushes stealing

berries from his Oxfordshire garden.

But like Svenskt Tenn, William Mor-

ris was out of fashion for decades. His

designs enjoyed a hippy-ish resonance

and resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s,

but by the end of the 1980s, “the trend

had drifted into minimalism again”,

says Montague. “It’s cyclical.” She sus-

pects Morris’s new customers are nos-

talgic for prints they remember from

their grandparents’ homes.

Yet even with its legacy and archive,

Morris & Co’s studio in Buckingham-

shire releases new designs — about one a

year, with a full collection every two or

three years. Most recent was Melsetter,

an intricate trellis pattern based on,

though not identical to, embroidery

hangings designed in 1893 by May,

William Morris’s daughter.

Melsetter is intended to be resonant of

William’s 19th-century work for the

English middle classes, but with its

exotic birds and blushing flower heads

trailing against an inky background, it is

aimed firmly at modern Asian consum-

ers. Montague says Melsetter is “in keep-

ing” — an interpretation rather than a

faithful reproduction of Morris’s work.

“Our in-house designers redraw, recol-

our and restyle — what they produce is

more usable.”

Remember rattan?

In Stockholm, in a cane-strewn work-

shop beneath the pavements of the old

town of Gamla Stan, a fourth-genera-

tion family firm is also thriving. Arti-

sans at Larsson Korgmakare have

fashioned rattan furniture in the city

since 1903. This morning, they are

hard at it — reweaving the arched

backs of vintage Josef Frank-designed

dining chairs, bought in the 1960s and

delivered for repair. Beside them sits a

queue of battered, neglected and

dilapidated cane chairs. “It seems eve-

rone wants to mend,” says Erica Lars-

son, who owns the workshop, co-

founded by her great-grandfather.

Rattan — ubiquitous in early 20th-

century furniture — is in demand:

antique and vintage items sell for high

Continuedfrompage1

prices at auction, and high-street

retailers such as Habitat have offered

modern versions in their recent

ranges. Most new rattan chairs and

tables are made in Vietnam or China,

says Larsson, but her Stockholm

workshop is the place where many of

Joseph Frank’s designs are repaired.

“My grandfather got to know Frank in

the early 1930s,” she says. “They worked

together, and my grandfather loved him

because he listened to craftspeople. He

sat with them.” She retrieves a well-

worn book of 1940s pencil designs by

Frank used by her grandfather, with

model numbers, instructions and meas-

urements for bending the cane at inter-

vals, a manual still used by Larsson. She

remarks on how unusual this collabora-

tive approach would be today: modern

designers often send workshops their

designs created with software.

Repairs are one of her business’s

biggest growth areas. She points to a

dilapidated — yet still elegant — rattan

rocking chair in one corner, rescued

from an auction house and made by

Larsson Korgmakare, probably in the

1950s. Most of the caning is discol-

oured, bleached grey rather than pale

brown, after sitting out its unfashion-

able decades in a Swedish garden.

High and low, cheap and expensive

Back on Strandvägen on a February

evening, Thommy Bindefeld, Svenskt

Tenn’s creative director, unveils the lat-

est item in its range — a deep, boat-

shaped sofa upholstered in tangerine

velvet, with curved frame and stubby

lacquered legs. Its style is reminiscent of

the postmodern furniture of the Mem-

phis Group of the 1970s — another herit-

age brand loved by maximalists.

The frame is made by Swedish car-

penters who have worked with the com-

pany for nearly 40 years. “They can do

things you cannot do with normal pro-

ducers,” says co-designer Mattias Stahl-

bom of architecture studio TAF. At

more than €7,000 without upholstery, it

is an expensive piece, but as Stahlbom

points out: “It is meant to last for ever.”

Fashion is cyclical and maximalism will

fall out of vogue again. But like its

archive items, the company is banking

on the sofa being in production for dec-

ades to come.

About 20 per cent of its products are

commissioned from modern design-

ers such as TAF, who approach the

design process in different ways from

Ericson and Frank, says Bindefeld.

TAF, for example, is more technical

than decorative. The remainder are

made in accordance with Ericson and

Frank’s written instructions, pre-

served in the archives.

Today, among the rattan chairs and

dishwasher-averse ceramics, elabo-

rate fabric designs by Frank are repro-

duced on lampshades, table linen,

soft furnishings and Formica trays.

“High and low, cheap and expensive,”

says Bindefeld. “Everything he did

was accidentistic.

“Estrid and Frank were modernists,

definitely. But for them, the human was

at the centre: everything should always

be comfortable.”

HelenBarrettiseditorofHouse&Home

Mad

maximalism

Rachel Chudley, 33, describes the

heritage names whose designs she

works with, such as Morris & Co,

Wedgwood and Mylands Paint, as

“anti-brands” — with their emphasis

on craftsmanship, carrying the weight

of their own heritage.

“I’m only now discovering the

significance of William Morris, the

history of it,” she says. “I grew up in

the 1990s, which was all about new

things, about chucking out chintz.

People rejected old design. Now they

are definitely back.”

Chudley, who works mostly on old

houses, used a dark, intensely

decorative Morris & Co wallpaper

called The Brook in the kitchen of a

recent restoration of a Grade II-listed

Georgian townhouse in Bloomsbury,

central London.

Some might consider it an

incongruous choice. But she was

certain that hanging Victorian-style

wallpaper in a Georgian home was the

right thing to do: “The kitchen was on

the ground floor, and the rest of it was

high ceilings, light filled, typical

Georgian. Everyone wants a light-

filled kitchen.” But because of the

house’s listing, the kitchen could not

be reconfigured. “So I just went with

the darkness.”

Chudley filled the room with heavy,

dark furniture and used the Morris

design to reflect — and lead to — the

hidden courtyard garden outside.

To Chudley and her generation,

Morris’s designs are fresh. “They are a

reaction against that very flat, very

digital, very image-based world we live

in,” she says. “Morris is a challenge.”

Interior designer Rachel Chudley: why I love William Morris

The kitchen

in Rachel

Chudley’s

restoration of

a Bloomsbury,

London house;

the wallpaper

is by Morris

& Co— Sean Myers

(Clockwise from

above left)

Melsetter, a

recent Morris &

Co wallpaper —

the company

is enjoying

newfound

popularity

among young

consumers;

Morris printing

blocks; block

printing the

Golden Lily

motif at the

Morris factory,

c1897; Larsson

Korgmakare

has been

making rattan

furniture, also

finding a new

fanbase, in

Stockholm

since 1903

Anna Kern

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FEBRUARY 22 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 19/2/2020 - 17: 53 User: rosalind.sykes Page Name: RES2, Part,Page,Edition: RES, 2, 1