In this archive dive, VERANDA takes you inside Veere Grenney’s London home, which first appeared in our November/December 2014 issue. We’re publishing an updated version on the eve of Grenney’s art and furnishings sale with Dreweatts auction house.
What a gift for an interior designer with a reputation for mixing the grand and the humble in what he calls “contemporary Classicism”: an elegant, early-19th century townhouse in central London, with high ceilings and large sash windows that fill the rooms with light. It had been largely untouched since the 1950s when, in 2010, Veere Grenney—former director of the renowned British design firm Colefax and Fowler—bought the house from a friend who had inherited it from his great-aunt. “It’s Regency, with a stone staircase, which makes it particularly charming,” Grenney says.
In addition to this home, Grenney owns a house in Tangier, Morocco, and has called The Temple, the Neoclassical Suffolk retreat that belonged to British design icon David Hicks, home for 40 years as well. (The Georgian fishing lodge was featured in the March/April 2012 issue of VERANDA). “London is very much about my working life, somewhere to service the machinery of one’s life,” he says. “Suffolk is where I regroup, have time to take stock, maybe have friends to stay. Tangier is a dream that is manifesting slowly.”
Elegant they may be, but the rooms in the London house are not large, so to maximize the sense of space, Grenney uses the same fabrics for both walls and curtains. The drawing room, for example, is a cocoon of gorgeously rich green silk velvet that you want to wrap yourself in from head to toe. “It is the most sensual thing,” he explains. “In the corners and folds it goes a different color. It is almost translucent.”
Another trick he has employed is to custom make furniture so that it is in perfect proportion to the room in which it sits—for instance, the canopy bed in the primary suite, which fits in just beneath the ceiling and is covered in the same off-white linen as the walls and curtains, or the table in the dining room, where the walls are covered in a heavily patterned Fortuny-style damask. In the dressing room, which serves as a spare bedroom, curtains effectively create two discrete spaces, with a guest bed neatly fitting across the width of the room.
DAVID OLIVERRich, mossy velvet from Alton-Brooke on the walls and for the curtains evokes a woodland setting in the drawing room. 18th-century English chair in Colefax and Fowler chintz. Mantel, Jamb. Light fixture, Gordon Watson. Art, Alan Reynolds.
Although Grenney uses sumptuous fabrics and beautiful furniture in his designs, he likes to keep things simple and uncluttered, which also applies when it comes to holiday decorating. He called in Shane Connolly, the celebrated florist most famous for the informal, naturalistic arrangements he did for the weddings of King Charles and Queen Camilla, and Prince William and Kate Middleton.
“Veere was keen that his Christmas decorations look as natural as possible,” Connolly says. “He wanted the flowers and foliage to look as if they’d been freshly gathered from the garden, and the rooms to be filled with glorious scent.”
To this end, Connolly brought in blue spruce, magnolias bursting with buds, jasmine, hellebores, and hyacinths, with white as the main color scheme. There’s not a hint of festive kitsch. As Grenney says, “It is nature tamed, but wild at heart. Maybe it’s like all of us.”
For more decorating inspiration:
Drawing Room
DAVID OLIVER
DAVID OLIVER
Left: Vintage Maison Jansen desk. 18th-century Austrian chairs. Large-scale art, Richard Lin.
Right: Custom armchairs in a Nicky Haslam fabric.
DAVID OLIVER
The clean-lined corner sofa makes a smart, simple foil to an eclectic collection of paintings and period pieces. Custom sofa in Alton-Brooke toile. Custom slipper chair trimmed in a Claremont fringe. Coffee table, Gerald Bland. Vintage side table (left) by Gabriella Crespi. Art, from left: John Lavery (top), William Scott, Roger Hilton, and Victor Pasmore.
Dining Room and Seating Area
DAVID OLIVER
DAVID OLIVER
Left: A bold-pattern Tissus d’Hélène damask envelops the dining room. Vintage mirror, Georges Jouve. Dinnerware, Royal Worcester. Silverware, Georg Jensen. Glasses, William Yeoward. Wall in Slate II, Paint & Paper Library.
Right: A judicious use of color and crisp tailoring give traditional furnishings a modern edge. Custom sofa in a Claremont fabric. Vintage Michel Boyer stool. Art above sofa, Roger Hilton.
Primary Bedroom
DAVID OLIVER
DAVID OLIVER
Custom canopy bed in Claremont fabrics. Bedding, Volga Linen. Custom armchair in a Tissus d’Hélène fabric. 18th-century English ottoman.
Dressing Room
DAVID OLIVER
Regency chair in a Veere Grenney fabric. Walls in a Sandra Jordan alpaca.
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This article originally appeared in the November/December 2014 issue of VERANDA. Interior design by Veere Grenney Associates; Photography by David Oliver; Produced by Carolyn Englefield; Written by Caroline Donald.