MY LIFE IN TEN… Antiques dealer Robert Kime reveals the things he loves
THE ANTIQUES DEALER AND DECORATOR REVEALS THE THINGS HE LOVES
1. Geoffrey Bennison is a design hero for me, first as an antiques dealer, then teaching me how to make a room work. I remember him sitting in my drawing room, looking at how I’d decorated it and, in answer to my unspoken enquiry, said: ‘I’m just enjoying myself.’
2. My design rule is that the paint colour for a room should be decided last to make sense of colours chosen for furnishings.
3. Tashkent is a favourite fabric for its scale and depth of colour. It’s taken from an archive Susani and hand block-printed using 23 colours applied one by one.
4. My small luxury is opening the front door and being greeted by a vase of fresh flowers. It’s when I know I’m home.
5. A designer whose first textile and wallpaper collection interests me is Flora Soames. She has a wonderful colour sense.
6. Lisio is a shop I love to visit when in Rome. They weave exceptional silks and I can never leave without buying a piece.
7. I treasure a 15th-century Nottingham alabaster carving I own, showing Jesus rising from the tomb with soldiers supposed to be guarding it, asleep. I find it very moving.
8. The building I’d choose to own without a second’s hesitation is Stokesay Castle in Shropshire, a fortified manor in a mix of styles, none later than 1660.
9. My signature dish is lamb boulangère cooked with potatoes very slowly.
10. When anyone asks what alternative career I might have followed I tell them I couldn’t do anything else. That was the trouble!