The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
ALL CHANGE
Before moving into their Victorian London house, photographer Elizabeth Morgan and her husband remodelled it from bottom to top. Sara Sarre is impressed by the result. Photographs by Alexander James
WHEN ELIZABETH MORGAN first saw her Victorian house in Notting Hill, she had no idea of the impact it would have on her life and work.
Morgan and her husband Martin, who works in publishing, bought the house in 2009 when they moved back to England from the US. ‘We didn’t fall in love with it exactly, but we fell for its potential,’ she says. At the time, the house was perfectly habitable but had been done out blandly in neutral colours, and she initially believed the makeover was going to be more of a decorative job. However, after seeking the advice of London-based Italian architect and interior designer Margherita Thumiger of Studio 29, the couple decided to expand on their plans.
Thumiger’s first objective was to remove a large conservatory that took up most of the garden, and then, inside, create the ‘flow’ that Morgan felt was missing from the layout. To achieve this, she opened up the basement,
‘At one point, you could stand in the basement and look right up into the studio at the top’
installed full-height glass doors out to the garden, and replaced two staircases, including an ‘ugly little spiral one’ leading up to the attic. The work took a year, during which she stripped the house back to its bones. ‘At one point, you could stand in the basement and look right up into what is now my studio at the top,’ Morgan, a photographer, recalls.
Starting with the basement, Thumiger created a kitchen, dining and living space that feels open yet subtly divided, thanks to the cantilevered Bulthaup kitchen units at the centre. Curtains designed by Pat Giddens curve around the dining area, and sliding doors open on to a small but verdant garden at the rear.
The ground floor houses a sitting room at the front, leading into a library and office area. ‘One of the brilliant things Margherita said to me was that you mustn’t have any rooms in your house that are just there for a rare occasion, which so often happens with sitting rooms,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I use mine all the time; I love lying on my sofa with
the sun pouring in, with a pot of tea and a pile of books.’
Indeed, Morgan’s love of books, and request for an area that could be allocated for the couple’s large collection, was the starting point for the decoration of the space. Thumiger suggested juxtaposing modern elements with the period features of the room, and installed a wall of B&B Italia shelving with zingy mustard accents – a colour detail that threads through every room, in furniture, accessories, artworks and, most strikingly, the carpet on the staircase, which Thumiger describes as a ‘line of light’, leading up to another shelving area for yet more books on the half-landing.
This sense of continuity was important to Morgan, who wanted the house to have a cohesive look, and enlisted Thumiger’s help to pool a mix of creative talent at the outset. ‘I’ve always been interested in art, and commissioning artists and designers early on meant that each piece felt integral to the house, rather than an add-on,’ she says. Thumiger suggested artists, artisans and designers whose work has added beauty and character to the interior.
The first of these was Thumiger’s friend Natasha Daintry, a ceramicist, who, she proposed, could make tiles for the kitchen. ‘But when I saw her work, it was clear that asking Natasha to paint tiles would have been an insult,’ says Morgan, ‘so I commissioned an installation.’
Daintry visited the house while it was still a construction site, picked out some of the remnants left by the builders, and incorporated their colours in a collection of more than 100 porcelain cylinders, which are displayed on a shelf along one wall of the kitchen.
One of the most impactful bespoke designs, however, is at the entrance to the house. Thumiger, who has a particular dislike of the narrow Victorian
‘Asking Natasha to paint tiles would’ve been insulting, so I commissioned an installation’
hallway with a pile of coats on the banister, widened the space by taking a slice off the main sitting room, in order to make way for a bespoke coat cupboard by furniture designer Paul Kelley. With sliding doors made of teak and copper, decorated in deep-blue felt and gold leaf, it is a work of art in itself, and is reflected in a large mirror that covers much of the opposite wall, enhancing further the sense of space.
Elsewhere, Morgan herself designed special pieces, such as the Perspex case that houses her collection of Vitra furniture miniatures. ‘I think the renovation has opened up an artistic side of me,’ she says. ‘All the people that contributed to this house have left it with a creative spirit. It’s not only art and the house I’m left with, thanks to their input, but the relationships I’ve developed during the process.’
Perhaps the most fruitful of these is her friendship with Thumiger: the pair are currently working together on a second project in Norfolk. studio29architects.co.uk