Now, most guests enter via that west wing. The ingredients here set the tone for the rooms that follow. ‘It is as much about the compositions I’m creating as it is about the process of gathering things and, in a way, that feels personal,’ says Jonathan of his approach. Scagliola blocks, used as a coffee table, take their shape from the boulders on the hillside, their surface mimicking the colours of the lichen. Chairs by Edwin Lutyens, once owned by the furniture designer and businessman Ambrose Heal, mix with triangular stools by Charlotte Perriand. On top of a cabinet by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, made for the Glasgow School of Art, are pieces from Jonathan’s collection of studio pottery. Behind them is one of Graeme’s recent works – a view looking up through the trees to the sky – and a votive stone given to them by the dry-stone waller.
In response to their new life in Wensleydale, Graeme has made trees the focus of his work, exploring their sculptural forms, textures and chameleonic colouring. For his latest project, he has collaborated with Stephens Tapestry Studio in South Africa. One work commands attention on the main staircase when I visit, others are hanging in the art gallery, Thorns, which they have created from a derelict barn in the valley below. The synergy between Graeme’s work and that of David Nash, an artist whose work Jonathan has collected for years, is immediately obvious. Both artists are observers, reading the tree and what they see with little reinvention, allowing their subject to do the speaking.
Displayed on top of a wall cabinet by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, salvaged from a Scottish butler’s pantry, are ceramics by Paul Philp.
Michael Sinclair
Studio pottery is everywhere, particularly pieces by Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew. Jonathan seeks out examples that potters have chosen to keep, finding that ‘often in the earlier pieces, you see a purer expression of the artist’s intent’. He is also drawn to Leach’s later creations, made after he had met his wife, fellow potter Janet: ‘When I buy, I’m always bearing in mind the shifts where the magic was happening.’
Furniture designed by Jonathan sits alongside collected pieces throughout the house. Much of the metalwork – tables, benches, a television stand – is by James Morris of Yorkshire-based Sculptsteel. Jonathan grew up with Mouseman furniture and now collaborates with Ian Thompson Cartwright, the founder’s great-grandson, to create contemporary oak pieces that make the most of Mouseman’s sculptor-like way of working, each bearing the signature carved mouse. The textile artist Catarina Riccabona has taken inspiration from the Dales landscape’s colours and shape for the curtains, weaving fabric by the length for the first time.