Shades OF SIMPLICITY
“It’s increasingly hard to find dolly tubs these days,” reflects Susannah Le Mesurier, as she muses on these ex-industrial ribbed containers from her Victorian farmhouse on the banks of the River Wye in Glasbury, Powys. “They’re probably all in our garden,” she says a few seconds later, with a laugh at the sudden realisation, half-joke, half-truth. Susannah is an ardent collector of these covetable items. A greenhouse is full of old galvanized-metal milk churns, troughs, metal stools and buckets. In fact, she and her husband David like rustic metals so much that they clad their porch in sheets of old corrugated iron.
The silver hues of agricultural and industrial metals are even echoed in Susannah’s choice of chickens (“I had to have colour-coordinated hens”). They are also evident in the grey theme of their modern-rustic-style home and converted barn, where there are beautiful old French linens picked up in L’isle sur la Sorgue in Provence or at Paris flea markets, and dyed different shades to create curtains and even dog beds.
Cast-concrete kitchen worktops, metal furniture such as the distressed kitchen cabinet, the study’s metal chests (from Baileys), along with light fittings such as an oversized ceiling lamp, continue the industrial-meets-country theme.
Rose-themed oil paintings propped casually on a shelf soften the look with their pinky hues, as do wooden elements such as the ladders, chopping boards Susannah can’t bring herself to use and kitchen-cupboard fronts.
In the sun room, where she spends most days, a pine dresser displays ceramics, abandoned birds’ nests and a wooden comb for the harvesting of whinberries, which grow locally. Elsewhere in the house, items are shown under glass domes: “Not only do they look good, they keep the dust off, too,” Susannah says. It all adds to the mix of natural finds, industrial elements and handmade pieces that give this modern country interior its calm and collected feel.
SUSANNAH’S OBJECTS OF DESIRE Galvanizedmetal items, agricultural tools, wooden chopping boards