A dark, claustrophobic house transformed in to a calm, light-filled space
The interior designer Kerry Franses has been going to art fairs since she was a baby. ‘My sister and I spent every October half-term in Maastricht,’ she says. Her father Michael, a respected textiles scholar, would man the family’s stand at the renowned European Fine Art Fair, while her mother Jacqueline took the girls to meet other dealers, who showed them their prize pieces. When her father retired in 2009, he was approached by the Emir of Qatar to become the director of special cultural projects in Doha. The couple decided to sell their large family house in Somerset in order to spend more time at their home in Florence, but they also wanted a London base so they could be near family and friends.
The house Kerry and her mother found, near Regent’s Park, was a former wing of a larger 1890s house that had been added on in the Twenties. Its windows were tiny and its rooms dark, with a muddled arrangement. Jacqueline and Kerry recoiled at its abundance of pink marble and wrought-iron curlicues – and at the claustrophobic, windowless, mirror-lined dining room. Kerry opened up the ground floor into one big space, with the exception of a short entrance corridor, which she lined with a concealed coat cupboard. She divided the space into kitchen, dining and sitting areas, each with a floor-to-ceiling metal door that opens onto the private courtyard at the front of the house. ‘This is the only source of natural light, so I had to make the most of it,’ she says. Formerly a parking area, it is now paved with York stone and its walls are lined with tall evergreen shrubs.
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‘My mother is a very calm person,’ explains Kerry. ‘Her watchwords for the house were: ‘‘Calm and no clutter’’.’ Plenty of understated storage took care of the latter and a simple combination of white walls and oversized pale oak parquet, with a chunky sisal rug by Tim Page in the sitting area, provided the requisite serenity. ‘There was no fireplace in the main room,’ says Kerry. ‘It needed a focus. So we created a chimney for it with the flue concealed behind the top of the wall next to it.’ Shelves here display a collection of ceramics by Paul Philp. A portrait by the Belgian painter Leon de Smet, in its original frame, hangs above the fire – and the whole wall above the fireplace can be pushed to one side, portrait and all, to reveal a television screen behind. ‘We are big film buffs,’ says Kerry.
The entire family can sit on the elegant sofa opposite, which Kerry designed herself. Its back marks the division between the kitchen and the sitting area, and she kept it deliberately low so as not to dwarf the Hans Wegner ‘Wishbone’ chairs around the island table behind. A pair of eighteenth-century wing chairs with Loro Piana linen slip-covers flanks the fireplace, with a simple wooden stool beside each of them adding a pared-back, rustic element.
The open-plan space is the perfect setting for the pick of the Franses’ collection of art and antiques. Kerry has gathered pieces from different ages together to make some memorable vignettes. An English oak cricket table near the fireplace holds a Chinese Han dynasty funerary urn, made into a lamp base, and a modern bronze by Anna Shulman, with a painting of St Ives harbour by Charles J Praetorius hanging behind them. Elsewhere, a small Roman figure of a lion stands near some ancient glass and modern ceramics. Hanging at one end of the room is an Aymara textile from Bolivia, which appears entirely black at first, then dark purple stripes become visible as you continue looking. ‘It’s like a Rothko,’ says Kerry, who is on a mission to show how textiles work well in modern interiors. On the wall of the Bulthaup kitchen/dining area, a monochrome Op Art screen-printed textile by Barbara Brown makes her point.
Upstairs in the main bedroom, cream earthenware vessels from China’s Tang dynasty stand on a George III fruitwood lowboy; their lids in the shape of birds with outstretched wings are displayed together. In the bathroom next door, smoked glass, polished plaster and a marble basin continue the restrained theme. When Jacqueline and Michael met in the early Seventies, they began collecting Japanese ink works, then under-priced, and there are some beautiful examples in the bedrooms. Chinese furniture is another favourite, with a handsome seventeenth-century chair in the spare room and a sixteenth-century sloping side cupboard on the landing. The Arts and Crafts movement reigns in the study with its 1903 chair by Frank Lloyd Wright.
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Kerry has grown up with the finest art and antiques but she says the most important part of her interior-design work is truly getting to know her client, their taste and the way they want to live. With this particular client, she has the advantage of having had all her life to do so.
Franses Design: fransesdesign.com
Paul Massey1/10The warm natural tones and textures of parquet by Oak Artisans and a sisal rug by Tim Page soften the lines of the minimalist kitchen.
Paul Massey2/10A Barbara Brown Op Art Sixties screen-printed textile hangs on the wall beside the dining table with its Hans Wegner "Wishbone" chairs.
Paul Massey4/10A forked wooden ladder by the Dogon people of Mali and a dark antique Aymara wool textile from Bolivia provide a striking backdrop for an eighteenth century wing chair.
Paul Massey5/10In the main bedroom, a portrait by Klimt hangs above Chinese Tang earthenware vessels displayed on a fruitwood lowboy.
Paul Massey6/10A Chinese Sung dynasty urn converted into a lamp base sits below an ink drawing by Japanese artist Ryohei Tanaka in the spare rom.
Paul Massey7/10In the study an Arts and Crafts desk attributed to Peter Hansen is paired with an oak chair by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Paul Massey8/10A Tibetan gilt plaque is among the objets on a sixteenth-century Chinese cupboard on the landing.
Paul Massey9/10In the bathroom, Qian Dajing’s ‘The Steps’ hangs on the bespoke polished plaster wall above a Clearwater ‘Armonia’ natural stone bath. A weathered stool contrasts with the sleek smoked-glass shower screen.
