All in Proportion – ‘In conversation.’

Recently, as part of London Design Week, Emily Tobin, the Editor In Chief of The World of Interiors sat down with interior designer Veere Grenney, and our very own Creative Director Katie Fontana and Design Director Merlin Wright. The overarching subject was proportion – but like any good conversation, many topics were covered including aesthetic goals, the importance of harmony, a desire for comfort and the significance of proportion, colour and materials. Of course these topics are the essential elements that surround our perception of beauty in the interior setting, together with a mutual appreciation for the understated.

Veere shares a reflection on the elitism of interior design in the 70s and 80s when he began his career, and the change in how the ‘kitchen’ has evolved over centuries and decades, in many ways going full circle. Each share their personal recollections of an early memory of beauty, and its influence on interior design as well as at Plain English. The group discusses, in depth, the use, function and the essential requirements of the kitchen and how these areas have developed through time. The relevance of proportion is also explored as well as the importance of eighteenth and nineteenth century pattern books.

We are excited to share this conversation with you. Welcome.

SNIPPETS FROM THE CONVERSATION

Veere. “It’s very interesting that when I started the business in the late 70s and 80s, the world of interior design was rather elitist generally, and it was really for the public spaces, the drawing rooms, the house itself…the kitchen itself was usually something that even the clients weren’t that interested in. Over the last forty years that has changed enormously and I would say, especially in the 90s it changed to be that people were using the services of an interior designer but they wanted the completeness of the whole, in other words, what went on even if they didn’t use it in the kitchen, was just as important as other areas and that’s a great change that’s happened in the last forty years in our business.”

Katie. “People want everything in the kitchen. They want it to be where you cook, where you eat, where the children do their homework, where you have a little desk on the side and have your computer, we want sofas, we want a fireplace.

And there’s this interesting change now where people previously were knocking out all the walk-in larders and wanted to make a bigger room and now, they want the big room that does everything, but they also want the walk-in larder and the laundry.”

Katie. “It’s sort of gone back to how it was in medieval times, because in those times – I’m not talking about grand houses, I’m talking about ordinary houses – the parlour was where everything happened. You had your big open fireplace with your cauldron hanging over it. Because you were limited on firewood, you made one room warm with the cooking and that’s where you lived.”

Veere. “All of us whatever our field is, it could be music, it could be theatre, it could be design, it could be anything. The people that are really good at this, you only realise how good they are when you experience everybody or a lot of it. And so even if you look at rooms, if you spend a lot of time looking at beautiful rooms in magazines or go to houses or whatever – when you start to define how much you like a room, I mean you might hate pink or love pink, it’s not necessarily the colour, it’s the harmony that exists within it that really makes people love somewhere, or feel happy or feel content or feel better about themselves or the world generally. You can’t help it, if you’re in a beautiful space, you just feel better about it. You just do.”

Katie. “I find it’s working in Imperial…the wonderful thing about imperial is you’ve got 12 inches in a foot, it splits down into thirds, to quarters, it’s so much easier designing in imperial. If you say, ‘that doesn’t look quite right, I want to make it smaller, where do I go next with my dimension?’ If you’ve got a metre, you’ve got 100 little elements to choose from whereas in metric it’s an inch smaller or half an inch smaller or a quarter of an inch, or an eighth of an inch, or a 16th or a 32nd it follows in a lovely order.”

Katie. “When I’m designing for myself, or in the showrooms, I try to use all natural materials. I shy away from most of the modern materials. But when it comes to doing houses, I mean, would I suggest a Cotswolds stone floor in a Cotswold house? Maybe, as I said, I just like natural materials. It’s not always practical to use the local materials. They’re often not available anymore.”

Merlin. “We to use things which age well, that’s the main thing. Nothing plastic, but sprayed finishes, oil finishes, metal leather, brass, anything that will age well.” “It should get nicer not worse with age.”