A charming thatched cottage filled with colour, pattern and collected antiques

A good relationship is vital in any project. Even so, a friendship of fifteen years is a rather unexpected bonus. Fortunately for Victoria von Westenholz and Xenia Buckhurst, that's exactly what they had when they embarked on their second project together. Drawing on their shared love of bold patterns, Eastern European influences and antiques, the pair set about creating a comfortable and balanced family home for Xenia.

The duo's inaugural project was Xenia's Battersea house, a slightly ‘more reserved’ version of a similar style, Victoria notes. Whilst that was decorated to be the family's long term base, the arrival of lockdown proved to be the push the family needed to up sticks and move out to their country house in the south of England permanently. Bolstered by the success of that first collaboration, Victoria was called in again. This time Xenia really ‘gave it her all,’ becoming more involved in the project and more excited by ‘the use of pattern and colour’ throughout the space. Where they might have added a ‘plain cushion or fabric’ in the Battersea house, it was ‘pattern on pattern’ all the way now.

Structurally the house was sound, but Xenia was keen to move the kitchen and create a large, open plan space. The former kitchen became the boot room, while the move means the family can cook together, watch TV together and chat, rather than being shut off in separate rooms. However, Victoria concedes, that change did present some challenges. In an open plan space, ‘you need to prevent it from looking like a sea of chairs. Nobody wants to look into a room and see a thousand seats!’ They needn't have worried. Working out from the central fireplace, the duo carefully planned a welcoming layout that feels like the beating heart of the house's higgledy-piggledy floor plan.

The absolute priority was to create an easy going house which was ‘appropriate for family life'–a brief that most designers would tackle by looking at how the family interact with their space. What rooms do they use? What are their mealtime habits? However, Victoria must be one of the very few who has actually spent the night in a house she's working on. 'I'd come stay for a weekend and we'd say 'let's re-cover this cushion. We just added and added and added.' Xenia is ‘just brilliant at choosing ceramics and pieces', Victoria remarks.

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This isn't just a tale of friendship, but one of heritage too. Victoria works closely with her father, the antiques dealer Piers von Westenholz, so it's unsurprising that the house is filled with carefully chosen and well curated pieces. “Everything is antique…except for a stool we found on the the side of the road in Battersea," Victoria laughs. Xenia speaks of collecting furniture for the house from antique shops over years and years. The pair also harked back to Xenia's Russian roots (she is a distant relative of author Leo Tolstoy) throughout the project, blending together interior influences from Russia, whilst staying true to the English bones of the house. Finding a middle ground in the use of bold pattern and colour in both styles, they layered Décors Barbares prints and Uzbek rugs alongside wallpapers and fabrics that reference 20th-century English linocuts.

The family have lived in the house for a year now, enjoying it throughout the seasons in various ways. In the summer they ‘open up all the external doors, and the children can run all the way around the house.’ It sounds almost too idyllic to be true, Victoria continues, ‘you can always see them…You’re at the sink and they’ll be feeding the chickens out the window.' In the winter, the house is perfect for ‘curling up with a book, sun streaming in’ as the wood fire roars in that cosy sitting room.

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