I VEER TOWARDS VINTAGE OR HANDMADE
Ruth Sleigh-Johnson, 56, art teacher (pictured with husband Jamie, 57, son Joe, 27, and daughter Jasmine, 26)
By her own admission, Sleigh-Johnson loves “being surrounded by stuff ”. Her family home is a feast of original paintings, upcycled furniture, dramatic textiles and enviable trinkets. “Of course, art is a huge part of my life,” she smiles. “But I loved it way before I became a teacher, and with my first salary, I bought a handcoloured Liberty print of a mermaid. It has been somewhere on one of my walls for the past 37 years.”
Most of her buys are one-offs. “I veer towards vintage or handmade, and I tend to choose things I love, and so that means I rarely get rid of things. Our bedroom rug is 1980s Habitat, and a reupholstered Edwardian chair, which sits in pride of place in our living room, was bought off a friend for a tenner decades ago.” Her husband is creative too; gathering architectural salvage, and turning old table legs into lamps and reclaimed wooden planks from nearby Southend pier into tables. The couple recently bought a rundown barn in rural France, which will be their next design project.
“Jamie says I’m a ‘colour coward’ because I always gravitate towards every shade of blue. It’s true, but maybe it’s something to do with living near the sea; there are always big skies on my daily walks along the seafront, and I find that really calming.”
So much about their home relates to family connections. It’s a treasure trove of gifts from their three children, paintings by their daughter, Jasmine, her husband’s carpentry and memory-laden souvenirs from SleighJohnson’s late father. “I grew up in a house where Dad had a baby grand piano at one end of the room and a grand piano at the other,” she remembers.
“And on the top of each one was what my dad called ‘set ups’ of collections – fossils, wooden animals, a miniature Tutankhamun head.
“I thought everyone had ‘set ups’ and now I have set ups of my own. The latest is a curated wall of postcards. Next week it could be something completely different. That’s the joy of it all.”