The playfully traditional home of antiques dealer Jack Laver Brister (aka Tradchap)

The world of interior design (like so many others) increasingly conducts its business online, with the carefully-edited images of Instagram bringing designers’ work to a new audience and online marketplaces changing the way we buy and sell. Few figures can exemplify this trend like Jack Laver Brister, a Somerset antiques dealer who has become a prominent presence in interiors thanks to his Instagram account @Tradchap and his eye for finding beautiful objects on Ebay.

“I spend pretty much all my time looking for things online now,” says Laver Brister, who lives in Frome, Somerset with his partner Richard Nares, a conservation building surveyor. It’s a very different way of doing things than previous generations of his antique-dealing family have known. His two-bedroom Georgian house in Frome is the expression of his love for collecting, packed as it is with idiosyncratic 18th- and 19th-century furniture, paintings and china.

The house itself was an amazing find–“ it’s like a Spitalfields house without the Spitalfields price tag", says Jack. Built in the 1780s, it had avoided the usual fate of being split up into flats and survived in its original layout, despite being unlisted. The interiors had been largely restored by its previous owner, who had found the basement, where the kitchen and dining room now sit, in use as a lawnmower workshop, and all that was left for Jack and Richard to do was rip up some unfortunate white carpet and expose the character of the wide elm floorboards beneath.

The couple had no trouble adding further character to the house once they had secured it. Jack looks to the masters of modern country house design - Ben Pentreath, Max Rollitt, and David Mlinaric - for inspiration, and has created an atmosphere which breathes history. The living room, for which Jack cites the curio-stuffed rooms of Calke Abbey as a particular influence, feels almost as if it could have emerged straight from the early 19th century, with its imposing grandfather clock, extensive collection of china, and dignified gentlemen’s portraits. A bright blue 1950s Casa Pupo lamp in the corner is an early hint, however, that this is no stuffy, pedantic interior. Across the corridor, the back room reveals a preoccupation with a different period altogether– a graphic orange David Hicks rug (rescued from a skip) and an Arco floor lamp testify to Richard’s love of mid-century design.

Despite the modest size of the house, there is nothing slight or shy about the way it has been decorated. Jack firmly believes in the power of large-scale objects in small rooms (the profusion of gentleman portraits, for instance), and has the sense that the previous residents have shared his taste for grandeur. He cites the extravagance of the rococo cast-iron grate on the fireplace as an example of the house seeming to have aspirations beyond its dimensions. Certainly there is much about the house that recalls its history. In the basement, where the original scullery has been converted into an open kitchen and dining space, a brick copper water heater and Victorian cast-iron range have survived to watch over present-day suppers. A chandelier and eighteenth-century chairs make this a rather more impressive space than it once would have been, but that is precisely Jack's point. The more contemporary kitchen has had to stay, though Jack confesses he would prefer curtains to cupboard doors, but the china collection continues to have pride of place here, and draws the eye to the many shelves it occupies.

Upstairs, a bedroom occupies each of the remaining two floors; the main bedroom, painted in Farrow & Ball’s charming ‘Setting Plaster’ with ‘Mouse’s Back’ on the woodwork, reveals Jack’s skill at rescuing what has been discarded by others. The 1970s bedspread was found in a charity shop, and the rich G P & J Baker chintz on the bed’s canopy and headboard were bought at auction. The genteel, period feel of the house is very much in evidence in this room as it is downstairs. There is, nevertheless, one surprise around the corner: a wild wallpaper has been allowed to run riot in the bathroom, evidence of a hitherto hidden taste for bold pattern.

Though his house has attracted plenty of attention and admiration, one refreshing feature of Jack’s design philosophy is his refusal to make things perfect. Chipped china, faded floorboards, a chair with its upholstery ripped off – there is evidence everywhere in the house that imperfection is welcome. “Imperfections are part of the life history of an object, why would you want to get rid of them?” he asks. “If everything is square and immaculate, you lose the sense of character.” As he prepares to sell the house, he plans to bring the same aesthetic to a new project, a larger house with a garden, and hopes to expand his business from antiques dealing to interior design. We don’t think he’ll have any trouble with the transition.

For more of Jack's finds, follow @Tradchap on Instagram.