A richly-decorated Regency house in Chelsea filled with an enviable array of antiques
The quiet streets of Old Chelsea are full of charm. There are Georgian terraces with elaborate carved overdoors and elegant fanlights, and nearby humbler rows where servants once lived. In the nineteenth century, this former village had a reputation for louche and artistic inhabitants; it was here that the writer George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) lived, far from the scorn of polite society, in unmarried bliss with George Henry Lewes. These days, any size of house in this much prized area is expensive; the paintwork gleams and the window boxes are bright with flowers. The laundress, the boot-black and the labourers who lived in Giles Vincent's three-storey house, soon after it was built in 1826, would not get a look-in today.
Giles opens his front door straight from the street into a drawing room that is changed in every way from its first incarnation. Two columns appear to be holding up the house, while a vaulted ceiling lined with white-gold leaf reflects light onto an Oushak rug below, patterned in pale lemon and coral. Above the chimneypiece is a painting of a pumpkin and gourds by the Post-Impressionist artist Louis Valtat, and its colours are echoed in velvet chairs and cushions.
Giles is an architect, as well as a designer of houses and gardens, and he has wrung space from every inch of his house. He rearranged the space on this floor, so the front drawing room area is now a generous square. He also built a double-height glass-lined conservatory onto the back to bring light to the drawing room, and the kitchen and dining room below. The luxury of the fabrics, the antiques and the paintings are offset by the rugged eighteenth- and nineteenth-century floorboards he has used throughout the house.
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Giles had a good start in life: both his grandfathers were architects and his aunt, Liz Vincent, a renowned antique dealer, trained his eye for furniture. He grew up in a handsome Regency house in Buckinghamshire, with a garden designed by Russell Page. 'I started drawing house plans when I was five years old and my brother and I had our own small gardens from about the same age,' he says. After qualifying as an architect (he won the RIBA Gold Medal), Giles worked for the historic building conservationists Donald Insall Associates, and then for the interior designer David Mlinaric, before setting up his own practice in 1990. Much of the early-eighteenth-century furniture in the house was inherited from his family, and he designed the spaces with specific pieces in mind.
The open-plan kitchen downstairs was also planned with the precision of a spacecraft. The grout lines of its tiles line up perfectly with the edge of the cupboards and the window, and even with the cream Aga. 'It might seem bonkers to go to all that trouble, but it makes the room seem comfortable because nothing jars.' The table in the adjacent dining room seats eight. 'I think it's important to have room upstairs to seat everyone you can fit around the dining table,' he says, explaining that this is why the sofas in the drawing room have a single base cushion - 'so, at a pinch, you can fit three people on a sofa if you need to'. Behind the dining table, he has made a slight projection on the wall to suggest a previous fireplace, then mirrored the walls on either side, hanging paintings on top of the glass at just the correct height so you cannot see the kitchen sink from the table or the stairs.
Giles takes a certain pride in the staircase he installed, as he points out the sinuous lines of the wavy, flat balustrade and explains how they were created. 'Each staircase tread needed banisters of two different heights, and numerous one-off designs were needed where the balustrade reduces in height, so we made full-size templates in cardboard to ensure that it would all work perfectly.' These are part of a theme of curves throughout the house, from the spritely Oliver Messel-inspired drawing room chimneypiece right up to the serpentine Thirties vanity in the main bathroom: 'I wanted a softer, more feminine look in the house.'
The staircase continues up, past a tiny and very pretty spare room on a half-landing. 'The width of the rear extension is one of the reasons I bought the house,' he says. 'It was just the right size to take a bed sideways on.' His own bedroom is at the top of the house and here he has borrowed space from the attic to create a vaulted ceiling. On every floor, meticulous planning ensures a spacious background, but it is his handsome antique furniture and his choice of fabrics that make this such a welcoming home.
Paul Massey1/15Columns create a sense of scale in the drawing room.
Paul Massey2/15In the drawing room, Louis Valtat's Still Life with Pumpkin hangs above a plaster and marble bolection chimneypiece designed by Giles, who was inspired by the work of Oliver Messel. Giles designed the bronze wall lights to echo the shape of the gourds in the painting.
Paul Massey3/15A pair of nineteenth-century Indian column capitals serve as coffee tables.
Paul Massey4/15The colours of the bold portraiture over the sofa match the multicoloured cushions.
Paul Massey5/15Stairs lead down to the kitchen and dining room.
Paul Massey6/15A cream coloured aga takes pride of place in the kitchen.
Paul Massey7/15The dining chairs are covered in Galbraith & Paul's 'Citrus' linen in apricot, which picks up the colours in the antique Caucasian rug from 1890. To the right is the breakfast area.
Paul Massey8/15A double-height extension brings light to the back room, which has a glass half wall.
Paul Massey9/15Natural light bathes this sitting area beside glass french doors. A cleverly placed houseplant appears as though it grows indoors.
Paul Massey10/15The inviting interior of the spare bedroom.
Paul Massey11/15A silver frame and accented wall light compliment the muted blues, greys and greens in the spare bedroom.
Paul Massey12/15A recessed bookcase and dark, handsome wooden furniture make a seamless study in the corner of the spare bedroom.
Paul Massey13/15Hanging above a dark brown dresser with gold details, fresh flowers seem to bring life to the abstract landscape.
Paul Massey14/15The smaller of the two spare rooms has a day bed upholstered in a discontinued Galbraith & Paul fabric.
Paul Massey15/15A seating area outside the french doors.
