CITY APARTMENT
This Fitzrovia apartment is a consummate lesson in using bold colour to inject character into a new build, while creating a harmonious setting for the owner’s collection of antique furniture and ceramics
The clever use of bold colour throughout this newly built central London bolthole has transformed it into the epitome of urban chic.
Artemis Scott, owner of Creake Abbey, the rural retail destination in north Norfolk, had very specific needs for her London bolthole. ‘It had to be in W1, have parking and be secure so I can lock it and leave.’ After nearly three years of searching, Artemis settled on Fitzroy Place, a development started by the Candy brothers and completed by Exemplar, in partnership with Aviva Investors on the site of what had once been Middlesex Hospital.
This apartment has personal resonance for Artemis as she purchased it with the proceeds from selling her parents’ apartment in Grosvenor Square and filled it with furniture taken from their former home. Artemis’s childhood memories of growing up in the Colefax & Fowler-designed apartment with huge windows and high ceilings, are so strong, her own
home could be termed as a modern imitation. We spoke to Artemis and her interior designer, Emma Deterding of Kelling Designs, to find out more.
Q How did the decoration of your childhood home influence that of your own London bolthole?
AS Soon after I bought this apartment, my mother said to me: ‘I hope you won't make the mistake of not getting a designer to help you.’ I knew she was right. I confess to being a bit square and safe, so I needed someone to push me. Emma was the ideal person to help with that, particularly with colour, and, golly, how this apartment sings with colour.
ED Artemis and I are near neighbours in Norfolk and met through a charity event for East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices. When Artemis saw my London
apartment, she asked me to work on hers. She did not want it to look like her country home – my London apartment is more funky than my Norfolk home and Artemis also wanted something different, but she was not confident doing it herself.
Q What was the brief?
ED In short, fun and colourful. The two of us sat on the floor and spent ages looking at lots of fabric, paper and paint samples and chucking out all the ones Artemis did not like. She had a lot of antique furniture from her parents’ home and a collection of ceramics, all of which she wanted to have in the apartment. Her beautiful Chinese black bureau has an orange lacquered interior and it was this that inspired the colour scheme for the
shelves in the sitting room – leading to orange becoming the apartment’s accent colour. We were also inspired by the amazing blue and gold mosaics that line the interior of Fitzrovia Chapel, which the apartment overlooks.
AS The orange is in honour of my son Freddie, as it is his favourite colour. It also reflects my love of all things Chinese, a passion that stems from my year spent in China teaching English and from the time my husband and I spent in Hong Kong. The Chinese bureau was the object that set the scene for the interior design, my parents bought it soon after they married, so I have grown up with it and with the elephant that stands on top of it. This is one of the best aspects of the interior, the way it links me and my family to my childhood home, while at the same time having a personality of its own and a sense of harmony throughout.