At home with legendary decorator Robert Kime

I don't have things because they're valuable

or because of what they represent at the time.

Nothing is very valuable anyway.

[gentle elegant music]

Well, my mother was a great collector,

and it just sort of started like that.

I mean, I just, coins, and then what happened was

that there was a shed in the garden

which was full of furniture, and I loved that shed,

and I used to go and rearrange it all.

Well, I got the feeling that I was in control of something,

that I wasn't being told what to do.

There was all this world that I could manipulate

to my own advantage and pleasure,

and that's when I started

what is called interior decorating now.

I decided that the only way I could be happy was

to leave school, and I went on a wonderful dig in Masada.

It was a wonderful place in Israel.

Well, Masada was advertised in The Observer,

and they asked for volunteers, and I thought, well, why not?

It was freedom, and there was nobody telling me what to do.

[bright elegant music]

This is a Ming Chinese, it's a brush holder.

You store all your brushes in it.

This is in Crystal.

This is my horse's tail.

I did a wonderful trip across Asia

on a horse, I toured it.

[bright elegant music]

Oxford was okay, but after my first term,

my mother arrived, and said, You've got to leave,

because your stepfather has left, and there's no money.

So I went to see my tutor, and I told him this,

and he said, It's out of the question.

You can't possibly leave.

You can leave for two terms, go and sort your mother out,

and then you must come back.

So I did that, and I ended up pretty wealthy, actually,

because I was allowed to deal,

and I had wonderful clients.

But in those days, you see,

you could get on a bus in Oxford,

which is what I used to do,

and by the time I got to Burford,

I could have stopped at four or five different villages,

all of which had junk shops and antique shops,

all of which I bought things from.

In one day, I could do 10 or 12 shops pretty easily.

These I bought from Robin Eden,

who was a great dealer in the old days in Corsham,

and they're from Longleat.

1580, probably.

This is a Nottingham alabaster, Medieval,

and it's Christ rising from the tomb

with the sleeping soldiers, so they're all asleep.

After Oxford, I went to work for Miriam Rothschild,

and I loved it.

She was selling all the furniture from her house,

and she'd fallen out with Christie's

and fallen out with Sotheby's,

and she got me to do it, and I loved it.

I made one condition,

which was that I didn't do the pricing,

and it worked fine, and I enjoyed that.

[bright elegant music]

Well, the one person in my life who I really admire

and was a wonderful man was Geoffrey Bennison,

and he was a dealer.

He used to come to my shop every week

and always bought things, and he used to come

and sit in one of the rooms of our house,

and I'd say, What are you doing, Geoffrey?

He said, I am just learning.

And he would sit there and absorb all the colors

and stuff that were in the room,

and he was a very, very clever man

and terrifically good dealer.

I learned so much in those days.

[cheerful jaunty music]

Egypt, of course, is the great travel spot

that I go to all the time.

I still go twice a year to Egypt.

Absolutely adore it.

It's really incredible, and I had a house in Faiyum,

which is about 80 miles southwest of Cairo.

[cheerful elegant music]

I mean, they tend to be full of junk.

Is it a bit of a mess to you?

I bought this for 38 pounds.

It's a flint dagger, it was found in Avebury.

[cheerful jaunty music]

And these are rather beautiful, too.

These are the eyes that,

you know, eyes of a pharaoh.

I just found it absolutely fascinating, Egypt.

I love this, you see, this is a sarcophagus for the cats.

This is an old chair leg, useless thing.

I mean, well, he says it's 2000 BC.

This is quite nice, this is a beard.

You know, that all...

Rather nice, isn't it?

This is rather beautiful.

It's a bezoard, so it would be medieval,

and they're very, very rare,

and they were incredibly valuable in the Middle Ages.

I mean, I don't think I paid very much for this,

but they are incredibly interesting.

The screen, I like very much.

That cost eight pounds.

And I like this picture, too, which is.

Do you see, it's got half a sun in it?

So the man is half a son, he's a bastard.

He's bearing the arms of his father,

who was a peasant, but his mother was grand,

but he can't inherit any title or land,

because he's his wife's bastard,

but if he was the father's bastard,

he would have a bar sinister, and he would be fine.

So he's rather disaffected, and I rather like him,

'cause he's beautifully painted, but he's just a bit sad.

I don't know how you'd describe romance, actually,

but some objects have it.

They just have something that is more than themselves.

If you're interested in them, you can communicate it,

and they can communicate it too,

and it's just magic, it's just how life is.

[grand elegant music]

My jumble, it's such a mess everywhere.

This is Indian, 18th century.

These are all Lear.

I think he's such a genius.

These are all my pots.

I bought those all 20, 40 years ago, that sort of date.

[elegant music]

These candle sconces are rather beautiful.

They're by Ernest Gimson.

I like that stumpwork.

This is Solomon and Sheba,

and this is all, you see, it's in incredible relief.

[bright elegant music]

In a funny way, I'd never thought of myself as,

I still don't, actually, as a decorator.

I don't see it as anything different

from what I do all the time anyway,

so it doesn't seem to be a job,

it's just something that I can do and have always done.

[elegant music]