Dundee has designs on new buyers
Bold textiles will add warmth and depth to any scheme, says Ticky Hedley-Dent
Dundee has a proud history of shipbuilding and manufacturing but the city is now reinventing itself as a centre of arts and culture, thanks to the futuristic Victoria & Albert museum and gallery that is opening this autumn.
The striking £80 million V&A offshoot — the first outside London — opens on September 15 as the centrepiece of a £1 billion waterfront regeneration project in this Scottish city, which has a population of 150,000.
With a design based on the cliffs of Scotland’s east coast, the building will have permanent galleries displaying local and international design including the Oak Room, originally created by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1907 and part of a tearoom in Glasgow.
dundee has now been designated as a UNESCO City of design, and a programme of infrastructure work includes a new railway station, hotels, offices and shops along the waterfront, plus open spaces.
‘The average dundee house price has increased 21 per cent over the past five years and sits around £145,000 — its highest level ever,’ says Faisal Choudhry, of Savills estate agents.
He says house prices are rising about 6 per cent a year and that’s before the impact of the V&A — which he predicts will lead to a boom.
‘There’s a positive energy after decades in the doldrums,’ says George Lorimer, of property consultancy Galbraith. ‘Central dundee and the docks are buoyant, and the West end and Broughty Ferry are desirable to buyers.’
The city had its first-ever £1 million house sale earlier this year and, aside from newcomers moving in to work on the waterfront, they tend to be employed by its two universities and the ninewells Hospital. The majority of residents live and work locally, although some commute to edinburgh and Aberdeen.
‘The east coast offers a fantastic lifestyle with thriving tourism and firstclass golf courses nearby at Carnoustie and St Andrews,’ says Lorimer. ‘The mountains are only about 45 minutes’ drive — Glen Clova, Glen Isla and Glenshee are all breathtaking.’
The excitement around dundee mirrors the positive effects that galleries and museums have had on housing markets around Britain.
Take the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, which opened in 2012 and now attracts some 60,000 visitors a year.
‘The opening of the gallery was the cornerstone of a wider regeneration of the Old Town, which had a significant impact and attracted buyers, typically from London,’ says Martyn Stubbs of Phillips & Stubbs estate agency.
Specifically, there’s been a £14 million refit for the pier and town centre regeneration, plus gentrification of St Leonards on the town’s western fringe.
‘The housing market has blossomed despite the town being a stretch to the capital for commuters (about 1 hour 40 minutes by train).
BRUTON in Somerset also hit the headlines when, in 2014, the Hauser & Wirth contemporary art gallery opened. It attracted 100,000 visitors that year and encouraged an influx of artists.
The housing market for this town of just 3,000 residents hardly needed a boost — after all, Cameron Mackintosh, Rhys Ifans, Sam Taylor- Johnson, Mariella Frostrup and Kevin McCloud all have homes nearby, but even so, buying agent Tom Harrier says: ‘The gallery put Bruton back in the headlines, and business for estate agents picked up after it opened.’
The gallery-house price link isn’t new: the same happened when The Tate launched its Cornish offshoot at St Ives in 1993 and when Margate’s Turner Contemporary gallery opened in 2011.
expect the same later this year when the final galleries open at the national Museum Wales at St Fagans, near Cardiff, and in Plymouth when The Box — a £37 million gallery — opens in 2020.
Hungarian textile designer Tibor reich revolutionised our postwar interiors with his vibrant textured fabrics — and now they are brightening things up again.
in the Fifties, his beautiful designs were found in the most glamorous places, from chic ocean liners like TSS Olympia to the royal Yacht Britannia, The royal Shakespeare Theatre and Clarence House.
The Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) was presented with a collection by the war board in 1947 and chose one of his designs for some curtains in Clarence House. The fabric was subsequently named Princess.
Tibor started out creating fabric for the leading fashion designers of the day: Hardy amies, norman Hartnell and Molyneux. But a punitive post-war purchase tax on couture led him to sidestep into interior textiles. That’s how he ended up bringing couturetype fabric into furnishings.
‘To produce a good dish, a skilful chef knows that he must blend his flavours, and when we seek to produce an attractive cloth, we must act likewise,’ Tibor said.
at the Festival of Britain in 1951, the designer revealed his deep textured fabrics on the latest furniture in an array of shades — Kingfisher Blue, Sunshine Yellow and Siamese Pink — a welcome palette of bright colours after the drab greens and browns available during rationing.
‘Having trained as an architect in Vienna, he decided to focus on woven textiles as he found the architectural qualities thrilling,’ says his grandson Sam reich, who relaunched the Tibor brand in 2017.
‘Like a building where you have your blocks, in textiles you build layers and surfaces to create 3-D structures.’
Sam, a history graduate from Bristol university, spent more than a year studying the archive of Tibor’s 30,000 designs and decided that his grandfather’s superb legacy shouldn’t be lost. ‘Our fabrics are rich in texture and personality. Design these days can lack that.’
THE yarns in Tibor fabrics have been put through a machine to create interesting shapes such as loops or boucles. and the wool is sourced from the Falklands, South america and australia before being made into a yarn in Yorkshire.
‘We blend and twist multiple yarns to create textures,’ says reich. ‘We try to re-interpret the beauty in nature. When you see a green on a leaf of a tree, you notice it is not just one flat colour but made up of hundreds of tones of green.’
Tibor’s designs are finding a new audience. Cymbeline, one of the fabrics he created for the Festival of Britain, is popular with interior designers and available in five colours, including navy and persimmon, tibor.co.uk.
His fabrics and rugs are once again being used in fashionable venues such as White City House (the new private members’ club from Soho House) in London’s Shepherd’s Bush. His striking raw coral design has been used as a rug and also, in blue and black, to upholster the bar stools. it is also easy to inject colour into your home with weaves from the High Street. Take the Quartet rug from the new autumn Winter 18 collection at Habitat (£350, habitat.co.uk). ‘i have taken traditional kilim patterns, cut them up, increased the scale and put them back together in a modern way,’ says Martha Coates, surface and pattern designer. ‘ The rug is irregular in shape too, which nods to this collage technique.’ Textile designer Margo Selby adds: ‘incorporating jaunty rugs and cushions can be one of the easiest ways to make a visual impact on a room.’ Her arundel rug (from £195, margoselby.com) makes a statement without being overpowering. ‘as customers become braver in their interior choices, we’ve seen an increase in demand for pattern, colour and texture,’ says Hannah Thistlethwaite, senior home buyer at Heal’s. ‘Layered, woven rugs add depth to a scheme, while woollen cushions and throws create a warm, inviting environment.’ The Labyrinth rug, a maze of pattern, by One nine Eight Five will launch in autumn (£749), or try the bright Catania Kilim rug now £422 in the sale, heals.com. rugs can also be as expressive as artworks. Just look at the artist Supermundane’s eye-catching design for made.com. it’s a tempting alternative to the inevitable mantlepiece painting and, as a bonus, soft underfoot, £299.