Country House Style
We don’t go for 90s minimalism, it’s too bland, too cold and too austere. But neither are we keen on 80s chintzes and frills, which we think are dated, fussy, and over-the-top. We like colour, warmth and comfort: rich textures, beautiful fabrics, antique furniture, soft cushions and cashmere throws. It’s the timeless, simple but luxurious look you’ll find in a country house (but not a country house hotel).
No two of our cottages are the same, but there are certain things they have in common. These being very much luxury holiday rentals, you’ll find fabrics by leading designers like Nina Campbell, Osborne and Little, Mulberry, Lelievre, Borderline, Colefax and Fowler and Watts of Westminster; the colours are subtle and the textures inviting: soft luscious chenilles and velvets, shimmering silks, crisp linens and cottons and warm tweeds. We also use a great deal of off-white for curtains and loose covers because it is light and fresh. Farrow and Ball make most of the paints we use, and, along with Colefax and Fowler and Nina Campbell, most of our wallpapers.
We have some antiques – chairs, desks, bookcases, tables, dressers or chests of drawers – in every cottage because eighteenth and nineteenth century furniture is so lovingly made. The wood is mellower, the details finer. Even the padding on a buttoned Victorian chair is beautifully designed: there’s a curved hollow to take your upper body, then the padding swells out to support your lower back. It is sublimely comfortable and mass produced stuff just doesn’t compare. (We pick our pieces, one by one, in the Cotswolds, London and France, and should you too wish to go antiquing round Bruern you will find the addresses of suppliers I’ve found particularly good at the end).
Bathrooms are sleek, warm and streamlined, tiled in marble to match the wide marble tops of the vanity units, some of them adapted from Victorian washstands. They have big mirrors, heaps of white fluffy towels on the heated towel rails, bathrobes, powerful showers and toiletries by Elemis. Some of our modern (twentieth century) sofas and armchairs are old Howard ones, the ne plus ultra of soft furnishing. But all have deliciously soft and inviting down or down and feather cushions, and underneath they are made by hand from beech, coiled springs and lamb’s wool in the old fashioned way. (We don’t think a chunk of foam plus rubber webbing is worthy even to be called a chair.)
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