Owned by the founder of Bennison Fabrics, this Mallorcan house is a masterclass in pattern
Geoffrey Bennison was a master of robust, romantic interiors, which, as his friend, the art historian John Richardson wrote, ‘changed the way people on both sides of the Atlantic arranged furniture and did up houses’. Though Bennison died in 1984, his legacy persists, not just through the houses he decorated and the fabrics made by the company that bears his name, but also through the people he met. ‘He was happiest sitting like some oracular nanny in his messy basement workroom, surrounded by a fan club of assistants and craftsmen, clients and friends from every walk of life,’ wrote Richardson. ‘As nannies do, he exercised a benign tyranny that aimed at being maternal. He would dispense a constant flow of tea and banter, and nannyish nostrums and nannyish wiggings that were all the more effective for their mocking tone.’
Gilly Newberry became part of this inner sanctum through a fortuitous conversation with his hairdresser. ‘He told me that Geoffrey was looking for someone to help him, as things had got a bit chaotic,’ she recalls. ‘I went to see him in his apartment in Golden Square in Soho and was hired on the spot.’ The pair worked together for five years before his death and, having been bequeathed a third of his business, Gilly went on to start up Bennison Fabrics, which specialises in hand-printed fabrics based on 18th- and 19th-century English and French textiles, originally discovered and reproduced by Geoffrey himself.
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‘He was a tremendous influence and very generous with his knowledge,’ Gilly says. ‘He had an uncanny knack of being able to make the grandest places into homes. One learnt from him without being conscious one was learning. It was a matter of honing one’s eye.’ In 2015, Gilly and her husband – also called Geoffrey, though handily known as Geoff – moved ‘lock, stock and barrel’ to Mallorca, bringing a good dose of Bennison style with them. This is their second house on the island – the first they bought after going there on holiday with friends in 1972 and falling in love with the place. ‘We sold that property in 2007, but both of us felt a lingering unspoken depression, which we soon realised was because we missed being here so much. And so we decided to make the big move,’ she explains.
This house, which is surrounded by a nature reserve, sits on the side of a mountain in the Carrossa Valley in the north east of the island. It is a canny reiteration of the house they moved from in Norfolk. ‘Geoff had already decided on the positioning of the furniture and paintings before we arrived, so everything fitted exactly,’ says Gilly. ‘We re-covered all the Norfolk sofas and the four-poster bed in the main bedroom in Bennison fabrics and installed two smaller four-posters in the spare rooms.’
As one would expect, given Gilly’s Bennison credentials, the house is a masterclass in using pattern. ‘Though the decoration and placement of everything is down to Geoff,’ she says. ‘He learnt so much from Geoffrey by osmosis and example.’ Whitewashed walls and white Mallorcan limestone floors provide a neutral backdrop against which a happy mix of stripes, florals, linens and silks can sing – it is a clever realisation of an English aesthetic transplanted to a Spanish setting. In the sitting room, an 18th-century oil painting of the Wertz family, which once hung in Bennison’s Brighton apartment, fills the wall above a burnt-orange and pink sofa. The room opens up on three sides to the garden, which sits somewhere between a Japanese Zen garden and a tea plantation. ‘The Mediterranean oak, olive and algaroba trees are shaped in cloud formations and kept low in order to afford a view across the valley,’ explains Gilly.
The house was only three years old when she and Geoff bought it and, as a result, there was very little that needed doing to the property. The only concession was the design and addition of a library in a former bedroom, with a hidden door leading through to a bathroom. The couple’s ever-expanding book collection soon proved too much for just one room to accommodate, so a second section was added to the library last year in what used to be an anteroom leading into the hall. Gilly and Geoff have clearly developed an unerring eye and inherited a love of beautiful, well-placed things from Geoffrey Bennison. With great thoughtfulness, they have reworked and reinvigorated both their lives and their furniture to adapt to life on a Mediterranean island, and the result is as much a celebration of friendship as it is an ode to their love of Mallorca.
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Bennison Fabrics: bennisonfabrics.com
Davide Lovatti1/12An 18th-century Chinese wall hanging is displayed above a Richard Ginori vase on a Bavarian painted chest.
Davide Lovatti2/12The Syrian mother-of-pearl inlaid table and Bavarian armoire add distinctive decorative detail.
Davide Lovatti3/12The house sits on a mountainside in the Carrossa Valley.
Davide Lovatti5/12The English blue and white china platters on the kitchen wall once belonged to Geoffrey Bennison.
Davide Lovatti6/12The covered terrace opens off the sitting room.
Davide Lovatti8/12The hall leads into an anteroom that is now an annexe of the library beyond.
Davide Lovatti9/12The American Colonial four-poster has a bedcover in Bennison Fabrics’ ‘Coromandel’ linen and an antique English appliqué quilt.
Davide Lovatti10/12An antique model ship and a Venetian glass mirror bring character to the main bathroom.
Davide Lovatti11/12Two French painted wooden horses flank the large blue and white Chinese pot above the doorway.
Davide Lovatti12/12In the main bedroom, a copy of Geoffrey Bennison’s four-poster produced by Clark & Trevelyan, who also made the original, is dressed in ‘Chinese Paper’ silk; the sofa is covered in ‘Roses’ linen in the lipstick pink colourway.
