MY STYLE STORY
The BBC newsreader tells Rachel No about her passion for African art, buying antiques abroad and juxtaposing old and new pieces in her Victorian home
BBC newsreader Kate Silverton shares her love of African art, buying antiques abroad and blending old and new in her Victorian home
What drew me to my home was the original !"ings and the working !replace. Before my husband and I bought the house – a Victorian semi built in the 1860s – I owned a modern #at in central London. We didn’t live together until a $er we married so this house certainly feels like home. I love each and every room for different
reasons but in the winter we spend most nights in the ‘withdrawing room’, as we call it. It contains sculptures and artworks that I have collected on my travels around the world. It’s a small room with an open ! re, a sofa, a library of books and my writing desk. It is intimate, beautiful and cosy.
I collect artefacts when I travel as I love meandering among antiques stalls and galleries when I’m away. I once walked into a gallery in Bali and found a very old stone piece that the owner told me had been recovered from a temple. It depicted a pregnant woman and was incredibly heavy. It took !ve weeks to ship it home but I adore it. A few months later I miraculously became pregnant at the age of 41, after IVF had failed. At the top of my interiors wishlist
has to be reupholstering the seat of an antique French chair. I have yet to ! nd the right fabric – I’m looking for something pink or orange to contrast with the white walls in the hallway where it lives. The "rst piece of furniture I ever
RIGHT Kate is keen to upholster an antique chair with a punchy fabric. This costs £1,850 for a pair at The Decorator Source. She treasures an African mask like this one from Ancestor Gallery. Farrow & Ball’s Cornforth White is the shade Kate has in her kitchen.
bought was a beautiful modern chair for my #at. It has square legs and arms and a so$ cream suede seat with leather thongs as rungs for the back. It is so comfortable. It now sits in our bedroom and I like the juxtaposition with my antique furniture – also in the room is a very old French bed with the traditional bedknobs and frame.
The artist I most admire is Patrick Mavros, a sculptor from Zimbabwe, who has a store on Fulham Road. He sponsors women with HIV in South Africa, so they can learn how to create the most extraordinary pottery. Their pieces have become so sophisticated that [luxury scarf brand] Hermès has expressed an interest. I have a crocodile jug that I keep high up, away from my exuberant four-year-old son, Wilbur. I love making the connection between
traditional and modern and blending the periods. For example, my kitchen is Scandi in its look but with a traditional Downton Abbey- style Tom Howley kitchen painted in Farrow & Ball’s Cornforth White. Then I have an African stool and a stone head from Zimbabwe that sit alongside in the area with a sofa. I love the pops of dark brown against the whites and greys.
If my home were on "re, I would save my wooden artefacts – the traditional paddle I brought home from Borneo and the African mask I traded for a dress in Mozambique.
The skill I wish I had is to restore furniture. All I can do is repaint my children’s Ikea playhouse table, but I enjoy it, and would love to be able to look a $er period pieces properly.