Faye Toogood
A collection of early 20th-century paintings from the St Ives School inspired the designer to turn a Mayfair penthouse into a celebration of British creativity
The clients are serious collectors and we were able to use their Ivon Hitchens paintings and a Peter Lanyon. They formed the entire scheme for the apartment in terms of colours, palette and materials. The ‘Britishness’ was very important to me; having these paintings as the starting point meant that every material, antique and piece of furniture that we bought was British. It’s speaking the samelanguage,physicallycomingfromthesameplace.Icommissioned Tobias Harvey to do a beautiful landscape triptych and Max Lamb contributed pieces. It’s interesting to work with your peers and with some of my favourite antique dealers from Pimlico Road. All the colours were hand mixed to work with those paintings, as well. It’s always a challenge not to take something too literally. Appeal to the senses on every level that you possibly can – texture, material, colours, fragrance, fabrics – to work with that piece of art. For this project, we created a scent for the apartment; it helps build on the senses. Rough stone was used for the fireplace and I covered the kitchen fronts in slate so the whole kitchen became like a craggy cliff face.
I’m always trying to find tensions in my work: masculine and feminine; precious and raw; high art and low art. In the space with Lanyon’s Cross Country, it was the way our ‘Lake Aqua’ resin console table spoke to the antique centre table and our ‘Roly-Poly’ chairs. Think about the work of art and how it makes you feel. If you’ve chosen a drawing over a painting, that suggests you’re looking for something much calmer. The most important thing is not to be intimidated by art; some of my own pieces are at home and my children climb all over them and put crayon on them. Understanding that you’re living with it, as opposed to it being a showcase, is what makes it magical. t-o-o-g-o-o-d.com