At home in Wiltshire with Robert Kime's managing director Orlando Atty

When Orlando Atty began working as an assistant at Robert Kime 13 years ago, few, Orlando included, would have imagined that he would eventually be running what is one of the most influential businesses in the world of antiques, fabrics and interior decoration. He was appointed managing director in 2016 and, although so many of us were shocked at Robert’s sudden death in August 2022, there was, thankfully, a clear succession plan already in place. At the time of writing, the small team at Robert Kime is in the middle of implementing this plan far earlier than anticipated. Some of the photographs featured in these pages were taken nearly a year ago and include a portrait of Robert and Orlando at the company’s treasure-filled warehouse in Wiltshire.

In 2010, Orlando had just completed a degree in business studies at the University of the West of England in Bristol when he landed a job at Robert Kime’s antiques warehouse in Marlborough, Wiltshire. It was meant to be a temporary role, but he caught the bug and never left. ‘From the moment I entered the storeroom, I was fascinated,’ he recalls.

He started working in Robert’s shop in 2012. At that time located on Museum Street, WC1, it was an almost Dickensian treasure trove of pieces and Orlando realised how much he had to learn. Slowly, his footsteps fell in behind Robert’s. ‘I was like a dry sponge soaking up everything I could,’ he says. ‘Above all, Robert was a very gentle and generous teacher.’ The pair went on buying and site trips, with Orlando learning to recognise pieces of integrity and beauty, to absorb the genius loci of a room and to feel the balance of a space.

From 2013, Orlando worked alongside Robert on some of his projects, as well overseeing his own commissions – always under his mentor’s watchful eye. Following Robert’s stroke, more responsibility had fallen onto Orlando’s shoulders. It was he who suggested the company move to Pimlico from Museum Street. Though charming, the latter space was on several floors, so difficult to manage, and it was a little off the interiors beaten track. It was also Orlando’s task to find somewhere for Robert to live nearby. Featured in House & Garden in October 2018, this memorably beautiful flat was to be Robert’s last home.

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Orlando and his wife Charlie, who married in 2019, had been living in London. But when Charlie was made redundant from her job in event management, the need for them to live in the capital became less obvious. Expecting their first child, they started to look for a house around Marlborough.

The house-hunting process began. The property they initially wanted fell through, but the estate agent mentioned that there was another option that might work, though it was not yet on the market. It was only when Charlie went to see that particular house – an 18th-century cottage down a quiet country lane leading to the village church and within easy reach of the Downs – and liked it immediately that the agent admitted it was his own home. The couple bought it.

Pressured by the impending arrival of a new baby, due in just three months’ time, Orlando managed to create new bathrooms as well as a new kitchen and dining space. ‘I really like the kitchen,’ he says. ‘It’s a good space to be in, although I don’t like the floor. But in the three weeks it took to build the kitchen, there was no time to replace the floor.’ His timing proved to be excellent – only days after its completion, baby Phoebe arrived. And two years after that, in July 2022, her brother Rafferty was born.