Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2020 i The English Home

Home has never felt quite as important as it does now, providing not only a sanctuary, a place to keep us safe and comfortable, but also the environment from which many of us currently seek inspiration each and every day. With this in mind, we have devoted the June issue to making home a beautiful place to enjoy, both inside and out. For those wanting a project, now could be just the time to refresh the exterior of your home, and our guide, Considered Approach (page 95) inspires positive changes to transform first impressions. If seeking to upgrade your bathroom, we hope you’ll find the practical and stylish solutions four interior designers showcase (on page 104) useful in designing your own blissful retreat. Within the homes in this issue, you’ll…

Fruit and vegetable motifs have long been popular in interiors, bringing a sense of indulgence to homes. A delicious and unexpected alternative to florals when used in repeat pattern on fabrics and wallpapers, fruit motifs are particularly useful in bringing a sunny, vibrant tone to a scheme, whilst vegetable-inspired pieces lend a playful note to accessories.…

Introducing our new columnist You may remember peeking inside the Cotswolds home of Matthew Fort in our February edition of My English Home. It was enormous fun to meet the food writer and judge from BBC2’s The Great British Menu, whose passion for food, growing his own produce and hosting guests lit up our pages. Entertaining and insightful, Fort will be sharing his mouth-watering thoughts on growing, buying and cooking the seasons each month (page 116). Creating this issue I’d like to thank The English Home team, who have worked incredibly hard from their own homes to produce this issue. Whilst this is my first letter to you as Editor, the team and I have been working together for several years and our plan is to bring you more of…

PURSUITS Capturing summer flavours Opening a pot of jam unleashes fragrant memories of lazy sun-soaked summer days. Homemade jam is an especially meaningful gift, and enables the maker to not only deal with a glut in the garden, but to adapt the recipe to suit individual tastes, like popping a vanilla pod into bubbling strawberry jam. Like so many things in life, jam went so far out of fashion it was adopted and adapted by a new school of artisans who pushed it in new unexpected directions. Raspberry & hibiscus flower, rhubarb & cardamom, pink gooseberry & elderflower and damson & black pepper are some of the seasonal jam flavours currently on offer from London Borough Of Jam’s online shop ( londonboroughofjam.com ). Jam maker Kylee Newton of Newton &…

CURATED ENSEMBLE Accessories maketh the outfit… and indeed the room. An ethos encapsulated in the new collections of decorative accents by de Le Cuona. Expanding on the luxury craftsmanship delivered in its exisiting fine offering of textiles, the range includes vases and occasional furniture alongside throws and cushions with beautiful embellished details. The five curated collections imbue a strong sense of character through considered combinations of textures and colours. Reef ceramic vases, from £205; stool, throws and cushions from Documentary Filmakers collection, all de Le Cuona…

The well-maintained exterior of a home sits nicely within the landscape and is not only lovely to come home to, but may also add to the value of a property. Success is dependent on a carefully considered combination of form and function. Here, we provide a guide on creating a stylish first impression. WAYS WITH WINDOWS Choosing to repair or replace windows can lift and brighten a home’s exterior, though do bear in mind that new regulations demand that replacements now meet strict thermal efficiency guidelines. This need not affect those looking for sympathetic period styles as there are plenty of quality reproductions available. Specialist companies such as Architectural Bronze Casements specifically cater for older or listed buildings, however, do check with planners before changing the outward appearance of a…

A plump, rounded green pearl lies in the palm of my hand – the first pea of the season (Douce Provence if you must know). This is a precious moment. I pop the green pearl into my mouth and crush it between tongue and palate. There is a gentle sweetness to its flavour, and a breezy grassiness and certain honeysuckle perfume and – well, there’s nothing quite like a pea that is picked, podded and eaten within about 20 seconds. It’s a different class of vegetable from your frozen pea or even the pea you buy in a greengrocer. Not that I’ve got anything against a frozen pea. An admirable product in its way. The trouble is that its way is a narrow way. Frozen peas are monocultural. They all…

Summer in full bloom is a glorious feast for the senses, a profusion of colourful flowers and an intoxicating aroma of heady scents wafting through the air. Choosing favourite flowers to bring into the home in joyous displays will cheer the soul, and adding flowers to a room somehow makes it complete. An organic, personal arrangement that can evolve through the season as colours, scents and shapes change gives the eye something new to focus on and a chance to unleash a little creativity. There are also lovely ways to preserve the beauty of this fleeting season to enjoy the rest of the year, which we explore on page 124 with deliciously scented roses. Floral stylist Willow Crossley sees the summer season evolve through its changing colour palette. “We move…

The classical architecture and design themes discovered on the Grand Tours of Europe so popular between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries are having a renaissance in interiors. Whilst the mythology and motifs are as enchanting as ever, their depiction in classical monochrome is now in a vibrant colour palette too.…

FELT It is hard to believe that for more than 2,500 years the nomadic women of the remote Tien Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan have been making beautiful wool felt rugs known as shyrdaks to line their people’s tents. Following a trip to Kyrgystan in 1996, Tim Moock brought a few back to London to sell. Their popularity was such that in 2007 he founded Felt and set up a fair trade arrangement with the rug makers. What is so appealing about shyrdaks is that these wool rugs have a tough flattened felt base which is hand-sewn with geometric surface patterns in coloured felts. Motifs within the designs are chosen to bestow blessings, describe a scene or tell a story of life in the Mountains of Heaven (Tien Shan). Each design…

The relationship between interior designers and their clients is never a one-way affair, always a conversation. Designers have the product knowledge and skill to deliver rooms that interpret each client’s vision without compromising their own, yet the to-and-fro of decision-making on colours, finishes and furniture sparks a fascinating interplay in the choices designers make with their clients. Here we discover some of the products, craftsmen and treasured pieces designers admire and have included in projects, and their own homes. THE VIRTUOSO MAKERS Craftsmanship is a quality that designers mention often about the products they choose for their own homes and suggest for clients’ projects. The value found in well-made pieces does not go unnoticed either. Quality never dates says Henry Miller-Robinson co-founder of K & H Design in explaining his…

They say the road to success is never easy, an adage to which the company Timber Windows can attest, though not that you would know it today – it has an impressive 42 showrooms nationwide. The company started in 2004, when its founders saw a gap in the market for timber windows that had the durability of man-made plastic and aluminium alternatives. So far, so simple – or so they thought. But they had no idea the lengths they would have to go to in order to create the perfect product. After plenty of trial and error, they eventually hit upon a unique blend of German engineering and Scandinavian techniques, allowing them to introduce multi-layered, engineered timber windows to the UK market, the first of their kind to do so.…

NATURAL PERFECTION Fingers in the soil, peas to pick, pop and shell, straight from the vine in English summertime. What delightful memories of childhood to relive each summer and share with little ones today. Peas are thought to be grown in English gardens since the seventeenth century, and Matthew Fort’s new column, overleaf, celebrates this humble but naturally sweet, versatile and nutritious summer vegetable amongst many others,…

There is hardly a hedgerow in the land that isn’t lit up with the parasols of the heads of white elderflower. I suggest using a tempura-style batter for this. The elderflower is quite delicate and the lighter the batter the better. INGREDIENTS 12 heads elderflower 100g plain flour 50g cornflour 175ml chilled fizzy water 1 egg yolk Vegetable oil Icing sugar or runny honey METHOD • Mix the flours together in a bowl. • Mix the fizzy water and egg yolk together. • Add to the flour mixture, a bit at a time, until you have a thin batter. It doesn’t matter if there are a few small lumps. • Heat the oil to 170°C and 180°C (335°F–350°F). • Dip the heads of elderflower in the batter. Fry until the…

“Although I’d heard of the Bloomsbury Group, it wasn’t until I designed Charlotte Street Hotel in 2000 that I discovered Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf’s sister. She has always been a hidden star. Whilst researching at the V&A, I became particularly interested in her early work; in the 1910s Vanessa was influenced by Picasso and Matisse. I visited Charleston, her East Sussex home, and loved her freehand paintings. She had a distinctive colour palette, bold but not bright, which works so well in an English light. At Charlotte Street Hotel, I’ve used similar tones in the Library and Drawing Room, echoing The Bloomsbury Group’s dusky blues, artichoke greens, damask rose, burnt orange and aubergine. Vanessa was co-director of artist Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops – artists and craftsmen who created artefacts for…