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<\/p>\nThe restoration was an epic undertaking, carried out with the help of a diligent local architect, but under our watchful eye. We worked our way through rooms and furnishings, all the while making sure this was a house that could be grown into: Charlotte was adamant, quite rightly, that she didn\u2019t want to live somewhere delivered on a plate where everything was finished in one instant. We left gaps on walls and spaces in rooms, where pictures and furniture would one day find a place. I took these photographs a few years after move-in, and things have already evolved since then. That is how I like it, and just how you\u2019ll find it if you work on decorating a house with me.<\/p>\n
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A favourite Mauny wallpaper in the downstairs cloakroom. With its fireplace and woodburning stove, this is a welcoming little room. You glimpse through to the stair hall beyond.<\/p>\n
Ben Pentreath<\/p>\n
One of the fortunate things about being a designer who isn\u2019t afraid of learning from history \u2013 even, frankly, copying from history quite often \u2013 is that the whole sum of human creativity becomes a rich well to drink from, a profound and endless pattern book, as opposed to a burden to compete with but never to use. I love to draw inspiration from the past, often more directly than you can imagine. Is there anything more wonderful than stepping into the shoes of our ancestors, thinking how they thought, looking at their buildings, learning from them by studying details, and bringing strands of history to life again with authenticity and with a deep sense of historical narrative? The trick, I find, with history, is to wear its clothes lightly and to celebrate the multifaceted jewels of experience that it has to offer, drawing inspiration where one likes, without becoming suffocated.<\/p>\n
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The view beyond is to the glamorous library. The wicker urn is from Atelier Vime, and the curtains are in an exotic silk stripe from Robert Kime.<\/p>\n
Ben Pentreath<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s all put together in this way, the one thing that exudes from the happy beating heart of a house is the personality of those who live there. It\u2019s this creative energy, between all these ideas, from room to room, and from house to garden and back again, that makes my life as a decorator so interesting. Wearing my architectural hat, I restore the bones, revealing the structure and healing the building. Decoration<\/a> is about the messy, bright, cheerful thing called life, which covers all that up again, and makes it real, vital and unique.<\/p>\n