The founder of London gallery 8 Holland Street's Somerset cottage
Asked when his Somerset cottage was built, Tobias Vernon hands me a plastic tray that he bought in the local post office. It is decorated with an illustration of a handful of village houses, one of which happens to be his, describing them as ‘17th century with 19th-century casement windows, a plank door and a tiled roof ’. Tobias took on the lease for this estate cottage in Mells last year and uses it for weekend breaks, after weekdays running his 8 Holland Street gallery in London and its sister shop in Bath.
At work, Tobias is a curator but, here, the cottage reveals the mindset of a young collector. There are no Gainsboroughs nor signs of the romantic if patrician English country-house look. And while anyone can use brilliant white wall paint, Tobias displays a hard-to-pindown but recognisable gift for collecting and arranging. The effect is cohesive and personal, a chorus of the charming and the amusing – right down to the green rubber floor in the kitchen, with its raised coin-like pattern.
Tobias was born in St Ives and, aged four, moved with his family to a Georgian house in Devon, which his mother ‘was constantly doing up’. But the family frequently returned to St Ives to visit their holiday house there, and his parents enjoyed collecting ceramics and Cornish 20th-century art, including works by Bryan Pearce and Tony O’Malley. ‘Seeing works by the likes of Alfred Wallis, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson at Tate St Ives gallery by Porthmeor Beach, in the Nineties, was enlightening,’ says Tobias. Later, reading history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge, Tobias’s passion for seeing art in collectors’ homes developed. He visited Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, and the former homes of Peggy Guggenheim in Venice and Charles and Ray Eames in Los Angeles. He went on to work for the interior designer Virginia Howard and, in spring 2018, set up 8 Holland Street in Kensington. Today, Tobias also offers a furniture- and an art-buying service, along with interior-design consultancy.
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His non-hierarchical attitude to art was applied to the two-up two-down cottage. It consists of a tiny hallway, a kitchen and dining room to the right and a sitting room to the left, where there is a door to a small staircase leading up to a bathroom and two bedrooms. Explaining his approach, Tobias says, ‘I left the walls uneven, which suits the vernacular of this house. Laying sisal on the floor costs a lot less than putting down hard flooring. And rugs work brilliantly on top of sisal. The old “granny shelf ” around the top of the sitting room was already here, but painted white it gives the room more definition architecturally.’ He painted the existing kitchen cupboards in Farrow & Ball’s vibrant ‘Dutch Orange’ and his Habitat four-poster bed a grass green. While the sofa is opposite the chimneypiece and the kitchen table in front of the stove, in other regards the feeling is asymmetric.
‘Instead of making everything perfect, I focused on incorporating artwork I already had,’ he says. ‘I bought the Alexander Calder-inspired mobile from the MoMA museum shop in New York when I was 10. And I found the painted ceramic frieze of people squashing grapes with their feet – now over the kitchen mantelpiece – in a Somerset market a few years ago. The owl sculpture on the table in the hall is by the Cornish artist Ken Spooner – I acquired it five years ago from Far & Wild in Perranporth.’
Tobias favours simple box frames painted white or stained charcoal, as well as polished or matt aluminium frames. ‘I like textures and that interplay of different materials.’ If on a budget, he recommends buying prints, etchings and gallery posters, and framing them simply with a border – or float-mounted if a print – to avoid them looking too flat. The unsigned screen print above the chimneypiece was bought rolled up from Sandra Blow’s St Ives studio. ‘It is the most beautiful piece I own.’
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While one can feel the influences of British modernism, Tobias also has a keen eye for the European. He found the ‘Maralunga Sofa’, designed in 1973 by Vico Magistretti for Cassina, at the online shop 1stdibs: ‘It’s compact and incredibly comfortable, with back cushions that fold over at the top to give that television-chair feel. I aim for the sculptural, defined and playful.’ One of the sitting room rugs is Swedish, a 1928 design by the influential textile designer Märta Måås-Fjetterström.
Tobias has succeeded in retaining the cottage’s simple rustic character, while at the same time making it feel spontaneous and contemporarily nostalgic. ‘I like the contrast of a West African ashanti stool with a green Ikea tray table,’ he says. Jessica Smith of Flower & Land, near Bath, has helped him plant borders and a yard garden: ‘So it all feels happy-making and uplifting now.’
What might he have done differently given a bigger budget? ‘I would track down an original woven-cane floor lamp by the Finnish designer Paavo Tynell, which I saw on a sourcing trip to Copenhagen and fell in love with.’
James McDonald1/11A Fifties oak and rope armchair attributed to Paolo Buffa and Vitra’s remake of Isamu Noguchi’s 1951 ‘Akari 10A’ f loor lamp stand below a black and white oil painting by Swedish artist Bo Beskow. Moroccan and vintage Swedish wool rugs add colour and texture.
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James McDonald3/11Tufted cotton cushions from François Gilles stand out on a ‘Maralunga Sofa’ by Vico Magistretti for Cassina found on 1stdibs; the white oiled-oak coffee table with a ceramic top is by Åke Holm.
James McDonald4/11Kitchen units painted in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Dutch Orange’ contrast with ‘Circa’ industrial rubber flooring in forest green by Polymax.
James McDonald5/11An old oak desk serves as a table, with seating provided by a Fifties Orkney oak armchair with woven hood, an Ikea plastic ‘Janinge’ chair and an Arts and Crafts-style rush-seated chair. A Sixties mirror by FontanaArte hangs above the original bread oven.
James McDonald6/11An Ian McKeever etching and a Svenskt Tenn brass candle sconce hang above Tobias’s childhood Habitat bed, now painted Farrow & Ball’s ‘Emerald Green’. The hand-woven linen throw is by Catarina Riccabona; the oil paintings are by Emma Alcock.
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James McDonald8/11A ceramic owl sculpture by Cornish artist Ken Spooner sits on a mahogany console given to Tobias by his uncle.
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James McDonald10/11Tobias and his dog Pablo fetch the papers.
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