A floral designer's charming Chelsea mews house decorated for Christmas
“You don’t want things too precious at Christmas,” says the floral designer Paul Hawkins, surveying the decorations he has created for his own charming mews house in Chelsea, “but then neither do you want it to look like…” he considers for a moment, “a tart’s boudoir.” It’s a philosophy that could equally be applied to many an appealing decorative scheme, and indeed seems to sum up the current interiors mood rather well. Paul should know, having begun his career as an interior designer before building a hugely successful floristry business.
Paul and his partner Steven Jenkins bought the house five years ago. “When it was built, it would have been occupied by canal workers or gravediggers,” says Paul. Since then, like the rest of the neighbourhood, the house has come up in the world. Its previous owner was the actress Susan Hampshire, who had knocked it through with three other houses in the same terrace, and during whose tenure it achieved a glamour it couldn’t have imagined back in its salad days. “It was beautifully opulent when we bought it,” recalls Paul, “all cream and gold and smoked glass – definitely a look.”
Without banishing all traces of glamour - two of Susan’s marvellously formal Italian strung window dressings have survived to bear witness to her reign – the house has an altogether more relaxed air under its current inhabitants. Their first priority was to open up the kitchen, building out into the garden and installing Crittall windows to flood the room with light. With this done, Paul wanted to give the house a “cosy, comfortable country cottage look,” which well suits the small size of a mews house. The couple juggle opposing aesthetics; during his interior design years Paul worked at Colefax & Fowler, Nina Campbell and Jane Churchill; his partner, on the other hand, trained as an architect and “would prefer to live in a Brutalist box”, as Paul remarks. “But I won on the decorative front.”
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Paul’s bold way with colour and ecumenical approach to furniture prevents any suggestion of tweeness, however. Pieces from his days in the Colefax antiques department mingle with funky mid-century furniture and accessories from OKA, whose founder Annabel Astor is a neighbour. He cites his friends Veere Grenney, Gavin Houghton and Luke Edward Hall as influences, all of whom are masters, in one way or another, of updating the classic country house look. The sitting room is a case in point; painted in Farrow & Ball’s elegant ‘Oval Room Blue’ and hung with landscape paintings, it is at first sight a traditional space. Yet the lucite coffee table, the “glitzy rococo-y things” in the window, and the modern armchairs covered in brown linen, give it a pleasingly unstudied air.
The same could be said of Paul’s beautiful floral designs. Having begun this stage of his career at Moyses Stevens, and rapidly ascended to celebrity as a TV florist on morning shows in the 1990s, he now occupies a busy, glamorous position creating arrangements for parties and weddings, as well as for interior designers and private houses in central London. “The skill is in creating something that is essentially bomb-proof, but that looks like it has just been picked from the garden,” he explains. With his parents’ old vicarage garden as a formative experience, the idea of the herbaceous border, of the way indigenous plants grow there in drifts, is always foremost in his mind.
For his Christmas flowers, Paul has opted for a few show-stopping arrangements on the chimneypiece, the bannister and the coffee table, surrounded by pots of hellebores to set the scene. “It’s all about the heavy grouping,” he remarks. “Much better to have a few surfaces heavily decorated than bits everywhere.” And this is where the lack of preciousness comes in: Christmas is a time to be jolly, after all. A French jar on the coffee table is filled with amaryllis, anemones and surf song orchids in clashing colours, while the bannister is decked out in tartan, oversized cinnamon sticks, dried fruit and dangling larch branches from faux flower specialists Peony. With the halls decked, the fires lit, and the table thoroughly scaped, the stage is set for a very jolly Christmas indeed.
Paul Massey1/9The panelling in the dining area is painted in Farrow & Ball's ‘Yeabridge Green.’ A painting by Rupert Aker hangs over the table, which was found at Lots Road Auctions. Paul came across the pendant lights in the sundries shop at Covent Garden Flower Market.
Paul Massey2/9The banquette is covered in Colefax & Fowler's classic ‘Bowood’ print, while the armchair is upholstered in Soane Britain's ‘Seaweed Lace’.
Paul Massey3/9Paul wanted a freestanding kitchen, but since the existing Smallbone units were in good condition, they kept them on, painting the ‘slightly ginger’ oak cabinets in Farrow & Ball's ‘French Gray’.
Paul Massey4/9The garden was one of the features Paul and Steven originally fell in love with. Paul planted the giant ferns to lend a sense of architecture to the space.
Paul Massey5/9The bathroom is a simple, pared-back space, painted in ‘French Gray’ again, and with a giant orchid, a plant that works well in damp spaces, to add visual interest.
Paul Massey6/9Many pieces in the house were found in Wales, where Steven is from, including the Welsh blanket in the bedroom. Paul found the ‘funky’ lucite lamps at James Jackson's shop in the Lillie Road. The walls are painted in Farrow & Ball's ‘Mouse's Back'.
Paul Massey7/9The chintz curtains in the study were also bought from Susan Hampshire. An oxalis sits in the window, a cutting inherited from a friend's mother.
Paul Massey8/9Mungo outside the front door. A wreath primarily made of Magnolia grandiflora decorates the door, while scented geraniums stand either side.
Paul Massey9/9
