SOPHIE ASHBY

Moving house 14 times before she turned 13 taught Sophie Ashby that no place felt like a home until the pictures were up on the walls. Following a degree in art history, an interior-design course at Parsons in New York and a placement with Victoria Fairfax, purveyor of the grand English aesthetic, Ashby established her own Notting Hill studio six years ago. Her projects, which range from the actress Gabriella Wilde’s family house in Somerset to her husband Charlie Casely-hayford’s tailoring atelier in Marylebone, all pivot around artworks. The starting point could be a photograph of a rugged landscape, reminding her of her Devon childhood, a Picasso masterpiece (‘in my head – they don’t have to own it!’) or a 17th-century Dutch still-life, after a trip to Frieze last year converted her to Old Masters. ‘A painting has the power to change your mood more than a chair does,’ she says. ‘So that’s where I begin.’ Though Ashby’s work is primarily residential in scope, she is keen to take on a few larger-scale venues. ‘A house is so intimate,’ she says, ‘while with hotels, because they’re all about escapism, you can be a bit more theatrical.’ www.studioashby.com