By Scott Yetman c h r i s t o p h e r f a r r c l o t h . c o m BOLTON
50 Riccardo Priolisi and John Hooks are confirmedClassicists, astheir Sicilian masseria makes alltoo manifest. Overthree years, the couple converted this fortified farming hamlet into a vast holiday home, then steeped it in allusions to the great empire based in Italy. Nor have they neglected the illustrious figures,from Goethe to Picasso,who subsequently drewinspiration from the ancients. MarellaCaraccioloChia conducts her own GrandTour. Photography: Giulio Ghirardi ROMANS opposite: © 2023 the andy warhol foundation for the visual arts, inc. / licensed by dacs, london
Previous pages: in John and Riccardo’s library – which teems with Classical tomes – an Andy Warhol silkscreen print depicts Goethe, whose six-week voyage through Sicily he would later call his life’s great ‘indestructible treasure’. The early 19th-century mantel clock represents a soldier of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Above: to fashion the railings and built-in bookcases of the library gallery, the couple asked a local carpenter to move his workshop to the building site – this turned out to be worth it, as the project took three years to finish. Opposite: on the pistachio walls of the morning room, 18th-century engravings by Georg Christoph Kilian detail antiquities recently unearthed at Herculaneum. Hand-decorated klismos chairs frame the entrance, and on the easel, right, red intaglios sit in a gilt Empire frame. Sittings editor: Hamish Bowles 52
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Left: an Empire chandelier restrung with semi-precious stones dominates the dining room at the rear, where the vista of a thickly forested canyon fills the window frame. The chairs, upholstered in black horsehair, are of the same period and style. Early 19th-century Creil plates stud the perimeter walls. Below: by the dining-room window, an Ottoman needlepoint chair sits in front of a hand-painted screen depicting the epic ‘Orlando Furioso’. The Italian poem, first printed in 1532 and a source for Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado about Nothing’, tells the story of a beautiful woman, Angelica, who lures the eponymous knight away from his duty of defending Europe against the invading Saracens 55
W hen Riccardo Priolisi and John Hooks set off to find a refuge from their busy careers in London and Milan (both then worked in fashion), they knew exactly what they wanted. Or so they thought. ‘It had to be a tiny house by the sea anywhere in southern Italy except for Sicily,’ Hooks explains, ‘because Riccardo, who was born in Palermo, did not want to deal with the romantic trappings and complications of living on this island.’ Fast-forward ten years and the notion of a seaside dwelling on the mainland for light-hearted holidays has been scrapped in favour of something radically different. What follows is the twisting tale of how the couple ended up moving to Sicily to take on a cyclopean project: to restore the rambling ruins of an ancient ruralsettlement, an extraordinary example of vernacular architecture, and transform its interiors into an ode to artists and travellers whose take on the Classical world has inspired their own wide-ranging revisitations. Perched like an eagle’s nest on a rocky cliff some 30 kilometres inland from the Baroque town of Noto, in southeastern Sicily, Masseria Cardinale looks on to a forested ravine with a river running through it. Its nucleus, a vastsquare courtyard paved with hand-cut stones and enclosed by buildings on all foursides, is accessed through a huge portalsurmounted by a sighting turret. When active, this settlement, which hosted dozens of land workers and their large families, bustled with activity. The tall, fortified walls that stillseparate it from the fields around bear testimony to dark times. When itwas built Left: the kitchen still contains its original octagonal stove, which has now been electrified. Gas, too, has been piped in for the hobs. The hand-painted majolica tiles enlivening the cooking island and dado are likely late 18th-century, while the square-cut ‘cotto’ floor was made locally. Opposite: this room serves both as a sitting area and a guest bedroom. The canopied beds, along with most of the tables, stands and lamps, were designed by Riccardo and forged in situ by a local blacksmith. The convex mirror over the mantel hails from a local antique market 56
in 1860, and for decades after, the encircling woodlands and countryside were plagued by groups of bandits that preyed on settlements such as this. Riccardo and John first visited this place in 2015 during a digression from their ongoing, if unfruitful, search for a home by the sea. By then Masseria Cardinale had been lying in a state of abandonment for nearly 60 years. ‘The ceilings had collapsed to the ground,’ Riccardo recalls, ‘and trees and bushes were growing out of the rubble in nearly every room.’ The two immediately discarded the idea of getting involved. Even thinking about it was pure madness. And yet there was something about this place, its remoteness perhaps, or the desolation that shrouded the ruins in a long-cast spell, that stirred their imagination. ‘We kept coming back again and again,’ John recalls with a bemused smile, ‘just to spend time exploring every nook and cranny.’ These included several grottos on the cliff on which stands the settlement – a hamlet that had first been colonised during the bronze age. Two more years passed before the couple abandoned their original idea and surrendered to Masseria Cardinale. By then Riccardo, who for decades had been harbouring a passion for painting and interior decoration, had elaborated a clear and detailed vision of how to transform these ruins into a home, one with ample space to host their many friends. A swimming pool was de rigueur, of course, because summers can be hot, as were fireplaces and central heating for the winter. They would plant an enormous citrus garden in a walled enclosure and a large vegetable 57
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Opposite: in the entrance to the home-owners’ living quarters, a Picasso ceramic plate in the niche offers a Modernist take on Classical culture – thereby establishing the theme of how different eras have viewed Greek and Roman civilisations. An African embroidered kaftan covers the console. This page: a framed collection of antique plaster cameos ushers one through to a tiny writing desk overlooking the ravine below and the Hyblaean hills beyond. Most of the floors are made using alternating triangular black and white stone tiles 59
patch, erect a chicken coop and design a rose garden. As for the couple’s own living quarters, the choice fell on a building at the far end of the courtyard where the wealthy landowner who built this masseria would stay when he came to visit. His name is long forgotten, but his status can be surmised by the rather grandiose architectural details,such asthe Baroque-style window frames on the façade. The rear rooms open on to dizzying views of the ravine. Within weeks of purchase, the courtyard and adjoining buildings were teeming with workers, including an ironmonger and a carpenter, who moved their workshops on site for the duration of the project: three years. ‘It has been an amazing adventure,’ Riccardo says as he shows us into the house. ‘We felt all along as if there had been a lucky star guiding us.’ The first thing one sees as one steps into the entrance hall, a small room with high ceilings and a lovely floor of black and white stone triangles (the pattern changes according to the room), are the contours of a jolly face beaming from a Picasso plate. It hangs at the centre of a pastel blue oval niche and sets the tone forwhat isto come. ‘Both John and Ishare a passion for Classical culture,’ Riccardo explains, ‘and for the way this culture was revived time and again by artists travelling to southern Europe for inspiration.’ The library, a vast whitewashed room surrounded by wooden balconies and with an Andy Warhol silkscreen portrait of Goethe above the mantelpiece, hosts the couple’s collection of Greek and Latin poetry as well as volumes devoted to ancient art and architecture, and the Grand 60
Opposite: Masseria Cardinale was a farming hamlet whose high walls provided the inhabitants some protection from the brigands that roamed this area when it was built in 1860. Here the main courtyard is seen from the entrance. Riccardo and John planted the solitary palm tree, which adds a metaphysical touch. This page: in this dining room (there are several, depending on the season and the number of guests in residence), which used to be a stable, the floors and arches are original. On the walls hang unglazed plates from Caltagirone 61
Above: this reverse view of the enormous living room showcases Riccardo’s murals, which were inspired by Picasso’s drawings based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The ceiling has been constructed following the traditional ‘canne intrecciate’ method. Opposite: Riccardo’s bedroom is the only one with an entirely white-stone floor. The austere cave-like space is lifted by rich bed curtains made from an antique Turkish suzani – as well as a mural by the occupant in homage to the ones Jean Cocteau made at the celebrated Villa Santo Sospir on the French Riviera 62
Tour. Riccardo feels an elective affinity with the Dilettanti, the so-called Society founded in the early 1730s by a group of young British men who delighted in finding inspiration among the ruins of the Classical world. The pale-green walls of the morning room, for example, are lined with framed 18th-century prints by Georg Christoph Kilian, a German engraver who spent months drawing every objectrecovered on the archaeological site of Herculaneum. Riccardo has taken his fascination one step further by reproducing the bucolic figures Cocteau painted in the Villa Santo Sospir on the Côte d’Azur – ‘a place I find immensely evocative’, he admits – on to the walls of his bedroom. Inspired by the result, hewent on to replicate the figures he saw in Picasso’s drawings of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, copying them on to the walls of a vast living room with soaring ceilingsthatwas once the granary. ‘I paid homage to these artists by adapting their figures to the proportions of these rooms and changing the spatial relationship between one and the other.’ These murals, all so beautifully executed and so joyful, are one of the many flowerings that have sprouted from this life-changing project. Other fruits are the rediscovered pleasure of reading by the fireplace and taking long walks with their motley crew of mongrel dogs. Who would have thought? There is an ancient Italian proverb of Homeric influence that describes how the future likesto sit on Jupiter’s lap. In other words, as John and Riccardo have discovered, it may be fun to plan one’s tomorrows, but it’s far wiser to leave the door open to great surprises » 63
NEON LIBERAL Dayglo colours, in the form of cushions, faux-fur bags and patterned dresses,raise the temperature in a cave-like shop in Tangier’s old town. The pink pop-up isthe latest venture of Topolina, aka Isabelle Dallemang, whose life began to hot up assoon asshe abandoned the French bourgeoisie for bohemian Morocco. Now she’s branched into bamboo and bronze furniture – a collection,says Marie-France Boyer, that’sset to rock the kasbah. Photography: Roland Beaufre 64
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Previous pages, left: on the winding Rue Ahmed Boukoudja, a grated window enlivened with a pair of baboushka slippers in Louis XVI style announces the pop-up’s presence in an old house. Right: reflected in one of the Venetian-style mirrors dear to Tangier, a faux-Louis XVI armchair sits beneath a jazzed-up portrait of the heir to the throne 66
Left: a detail of one of Topolina’s bronze tables, a newish design in which legs and struts are modelled on tree branches. She also sells the little birds as separate items. Above: in the main room, supported by a pillar and lit by a square hole in the roof, faux-fur bags sit on tables, while vintage jewellery, cushions and hats nestle in gold-accented niches 67
A s photographer Roland Beaufre and I pass through the great portal of Bab-el-Kasbah,we enterthe medina, Tangier’s old town. After turning right at the ancient banyan tree with its intertwining vines, we head down the steep, twisting street, whose recently renovated walls gleam white, like the Tunisian houses of Sidi Bou Said. A new pop-up store named after Isabelle Lallemang’s pseudonym – Topolina – haslanded inwhatwas once somebody’s living area, one with very low ceilings and thick, uneven walls. Entering this groundfloor space from the sunny streets feels like stepping inside a cave as a celebrant in some arcane religious ceremony. Perhaps it’s the colour. A striking pink laced with matt gold. It reminds you of sensual hippies in 1970s India, but above all it’s a Schiaparelli pink, thatshocking hue of the prewar years, later worn by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. ‘It was an instinctive choice,’says Topolina, who only likes colours that pack a punch. Turquoise, orange and gold fill her apartment, which featured in this magazine (WoI Feb 2017). Rooms tempered by shades of khaki and topped with tiny skylights radiate off a central room lit by a square opening in the ceiling, supported by a large concrete pillar. The floors are strewn with dozens of Persian and Moroccan rugs, as well as kitsch ones with hyper-realistic camel and peacock motifs. On the racks, we find an array of multicoloured clothing. On the tables, fluorescent faux-fur bags, vintage jewellery, African batik and leopard-print cushions plus a variety of quirky hats come together in a joyful dance. Isabelle has decorated the walls using fashion photos taken from 1930s magazines. Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant in tuxedos and suits hang alongside a large portrait of the crown prince of Morocco. Brightening up one dark corner,she hasforged a star-shaped iron wall light and adorned it with electric light bulbs, and an old photo of children at the beach in their woollen swimsuits hangs just above. Except for an imitation Louis XVI armchair, deliberately thrown in to keep you on your toes, and large,soft divans upholstered in batik and 1970s tapestries, Isabelle designed all the furniture herself, in rattan, bamboo and bronze. This is her first time dabbling in interior design and she is making plans for another iteration in her large shop in Sidi Ghanem, Marrakesh. ‘This happened completely by chance. During lockdown I found myself moping around a former house of [the Chilean painter] Claudio Bravo, which had a large, beautifully arranged tropical garden. I was looking at shapes and colours that I’d never seen before, because I’m a novice when it comesto nature. This hotchpotch of different plants fascinated me, so I started to draw them and then I suddenly got the idea for these furniture pieces.’ Here in Tangier, she produced small, limited editions of chairs, lamps and side tables in bamboo, then bronze. A handful of birds and dragonflies not includedintheoriginaldesigns, a Japanesestyle settee,star-shaped tables, exotic lanterns and a bronze table unconsciously reminiscent of Giacometti or Claude Lalanne add a breath of sophistication and poetry to the pink cave. Driven by exceptional joie de vivre and energy, this hard-working woman’s path to the world of fashion had its fair share of twists and turns. The daughter of a Breton gendarme, 17-year-old Topolina didn’t do especially well at school. She was much more interested in sewing patterns, and was determined to design her own clothes, preferably in the style of Audrey Hepburn. But, forced to choose a vocation, she later moved to Touraine to open a fabric shop, where she sold scraps and discontinued textiles from major brands such as Canovas, Le Manach and Designers Guild, making and selling her own cushions and curtains. These outlandish printswere a bit much forthe local rural scene, however; Isabelle’s neighbours were more partial to toile de jouy, gingham, stripes and Liberty florals. The seamstress and retailer, already married more than once and a mother, decided to try her luck in the restaurant/hotel sector in Normandy. But Trouville wasn’t the right fit for this ebullient young woman, who lived life in the fast lane, dancing and laughing. One day, she left town to go on holiday to Marrakesh, leaving her reputation behind her... and never came back. Morocco stole her heart: the light, the bold colours, the mosaic of costumes and ethnicities, its many artisans… She found peace and inspiration in its vibrant culture, allowing her to channel her energy. She decided to stay. Her fifties were like a rebirth: she rediscovered her first loves, patterns and fashion, now shaped by her wealth of experiences and new adventures. She was joined by her son, PierreHenry. He takes care of the business side of things while his mother focuses on design. They make a wonderfully closeknit team. The pair are set on the road to success, with their unmistakable style that remains consistent year in, year out. Topolina is constantly innovating her collection, delighting customers with surprises. It’s joyful. It’s funny. It’s sexy. The unisex trousers match the one-size-fitsall dresses. Footwear includes Louis XVI babouche slippers and floral-print moccasins with little tassels. Winter and summer coats bloom in vibrant hues, leaving one unprepared forsome unexpected linings: one of Topolina’s signature touches. It’s a flamboyant, hyper-feminine style inspired by Gucci and Saint-Tropez,with a touch of 1970s nostalgia. Topolina’s family business is now booming, with a total of four shops: two in Marrakesh, one in Tangier and one more classic, muted outlet in Brussels. Her pink grotto in the medina of Tangier is undoubtedly the most fun and spontaneous of the lot – an apt reflection of its vibrant owner ª For details, email [email protected] This japonaise sofa, made of bamboo, is a bona fide star of the new furniture collection, one inspired by Topolina’s sketches of plants in the Chilean artist Claudio Bravo’s garden. Above hangs a Moroccan painted shelf, the arched niches filled with zipped bags 68
Much of Geoffrey Bawa’s design is about the interplay between interior space and exteriorsetting. But ethnic tensionsin Sri Lanka and, later, the eruption of violence meant that the architect’s house in the capital increasingly took on the air of a small fortress, as if keeping the warring world at bay. Staking out the grounds, Niru Ratnam plays detective in Colombo. Photography: Harry Crowder OPEN AND CASE SHUT 70
to three terraced houses, which Bawa bought one by one until he had the whole block. The chair in the foreground is a re-creation by Bawa of Mies’s ‘Barcelona’ chair from a period (the 1960s) when European designs were very difficult to import into Sri Lanka. Its cover is a textile by Barbara Sansoni whose name, ‘Jak and Ebony’, refers to two of the most commonly used timbers in the nation’s furniture. The wall hanging just above is by Indian designer Ritten Mazumdar. Opposite: the view from the dining room into a rear courtyard. The mature trees now take up much of the outdoor spaces. The stuffed toy on the chair at left was in fact a status symbol: only aristocrats had access to them Previous pages, left: the street elevation to 33rd Lane, a quiet cul-de-sac. Timber latticework sliding garage doors sit below a reclaimed open balustrade opening, which supplies ventilation. Right: the roots of a tree threaten to outgrow a well bringing light into the entrance hall. This page: the hall was originally a side passage leading 72
I am reliably informed thattucked away just inside Geoffrey Bawa’s former home in Colombo is a flawless 1934 Rolls-Royce Drophead Coupe. The architect bought the car when he was a student at the Architectural Association in London in the 1950s. He was already in hislate thirties, and had grown disillusioned with his early legal career. Bawa would take the Rolls for a spin around London and, on occasion, head off in it to Rome for long weekends. Much later in life, at the height of his practice, Bawa used the same car to drive to the state opening of Sri Lanka’s parliament building, which he himself had designed. It was the last time he used it. He wasthe most prominent architect in Sri Lanka, and arguably in South Asia, associated with a style that came to be called ‘tropical Modernism’. He owed an intellectual debt to Minnette de Silva, a Sri Lankan practitioner who had studied at the AA before him, and was close to Le Corbusier, but developed a style that was all her own. His buildings reconciled the clean lines of the International Style with the lush and overgrown tropics, allowing the chaotic natural environment to not merely intrude into interiors but to become a constituent part of them. Apparently the Rolls is parked just behind the front door of his house, which is now known simply as Number 11. My tuktuk driver looks slightly surprised when I ask to be dropped off there. At the time of my visit the country is lurching out of near-bankruptcy, brought on by a government that islargely reviled. I have been on the Bawa trail,staying at the extraordinarily beautiful Last House on the south coast – beautiful because it exemplifies Bawa’s ability to somehow combine Modernist interiors with jungly surroundings. Interiors give way to exteriors, doors open on to vistas of corridors leading to more doors. But it’s also beautiful because noone else is there – the country’s parlous state and widely reported public protests mean that most tourists have stayed away. The Last House, so named both because it was Bawa’s concluding private commission and because it is the final residence on that beach, is splendidly empty. Life at Number 11 sounds like it was pretty good. Bawa bought a small bungalow in 1958 and, over the next decade, adjoined three neighbouring ones, converting them into the residence he lived in for the next30 years. The house seemsto have been designed so that Bawa might permanently live in a state of heightened aesthetic pleasure. He would have been able to sit up in bed and view a large frangipani 73
contrasting with the floor’s white epoxy, one long wall of the living room is dominated by a Balinese wall hanging, which is threatened by the heating climate. Far right: on a raised lightbox at the far end of the room, one screened by bamboo and cotton shades, an Eames ‘Giant House of Cards’, released in 1953, sits on a speaker. This faces an Eero Saarinen ‘Tulip’ chair, side table and stool perched on the shag-pile rug. The mismatched curved-arm antique armchairs are part of Bawa’s collection of colonial furniture Previous pages: in this, the most private sitting room on the ground floor, the taller central roof allows for a higher ceiling. The dining room can be found beyond the pair of reclaimed columns, while the opening, right, leads to a darkroom. This page, above: 76
through the sitting room. Then he might get up and take his daily traditional English breakfast on the veranda, served on the immaculate family silver. Or he might have ascended to the Corbusierinfluenced roof terrace to contemplate his next project. Visitors often described the mixture of East and West, of outside and inside, of being surrounded. Unfortunately, though, I miss all this. Despite being a Bawa fan, I have failed to do my basic research and I arrive at Number 11 at the wrong hour. Tours begin at strict times and if you miss them, you are brusquely dismissed. I take this on the chin, unlike three irate Chinese tourists who try to argue their way in, to no avail. Instead, I check out the exterior for evidence of the four original bungalows. There is not much. But circling the perimeter, I experience a slightly different frisson to what I felt at the Last House, and perhaps over-imagined about Bawa’s architecture. This oasis of tranquility seems more like a small fortress, built not so much to bring the outside in, but to keep the less welcome bits firmly out. I think about my own family history. I was born in Sri Lanka, but my family left the country in the early 1970s, when I was two. Tensions were brewing between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority; my parents, who are both Tamil, decided the best way forward wasto get out. We moved to Birmingham. My earliest memory of Sri Lanka is of a trip in July 1983, a year after Bawa had trundled his old Rolls Royce down to the new parliament building. A week after we were there, Tamil communities in Colombo were attacked and massacred by Sinhalese mobs. Later I learned that peoplewere burned alive. My parentsshielded me and my sister from the news. 77
Opposite: in this waiting area inside the garage hangs a work by Belgian artist Saskia Pintelon. A one-time resident of the Cinnamon Hill rooms at Lunuganga, she paid part of her rent to Bawa in paintings. The looped metal in the foreground is the backrest of a prototype chair Bawa designed for the lobby of his Kandalama hotel. Above: on the second-floor roof terrace, the glass block tower in the background contains a lift shaft added in later life after Bawa had two strokes. The original view, over the Colombo skyline to the sea, has since been blocked by buildings After July 1983 the violence spread to other regions, detonating a civil war that, aside from a few lulls, would continue to its bloody end in 2009. I think of Bawa at Number 11. One of the things that Western writers consistently ignore is that Bawa looked white. His mother was what is known as a ‘Burgher’, a catch-all term for those descended from European colonists, and hisfather was a wealthy Sri Lankan Muslim lawyer who held important posts in the colonial administration. He did not look like the people waging war on the otherside of his walls. Bawa closed his office at the end of the 1980s, but he kept working from Number 11 until he died in 2003, continuing to design wonderful buildings, celebrating the local vernacular within a language of international Modernism. All the while, outside, the actual locals were busy slaughtering each other. Perhaps it’s unfair to expect Bawa to have commented much on the civil war – most Sri Lankans did not, and artistic responses to it only really started to take shape in its aftermath. It is more fruitful to think about Number11 as an alternative vision of the nation to the turbulent realities of those years. Nature and light pour in, rather than man-made chaos. Bawa celebrated cultural pluralism through his diverse collection of objects, wall hangings and furniture. It is a house in which one might climb the stairs to the top and see a world beyond Sri Lanka’s shores. It is both outward-looking and somehowinwardly meditative, a house to live in and think of better versions of the present and the future ª Number 11, 33rd Lane, Bagatelle Rd, Colombo 03, can be visited by the public. For tour times, ring 00 94 11 433 7335, or visit geoffreybawa.com 79
Photographer Tim Clinch could always be found nosing through some European flea market or other. These days, though, he mainly slakes his purchasing passion in the Bulgarian village of Mindya, where he’s been living for the past two decades. After years traipsing round the vibrant local bazaars, he’s sealed the deal on countless traditional treasures–from homespun blanketsto ceiling-heightstoves – as his home nowattests. An inquisitive Oliver Maclennan peepsthrough the letterbox.Photography:JoannaMaclennan BUSINESS The kitchen ceiling in Tim Clinch’s Bulgarian home was repaired and repainted to echo the green ones throughout the house – one component in a colour scheme inspired by the country’s flag. The icon cabinet in the top corner is ubiquitous across Mindya 80
I t’s all old junk from the market, picked up around and about.’ Tim Clinch, a professional photographer who has lived in Bulgaria, on and off, for nearly 20 years now, has certainly done more than collect ‘old junk’. Located in Mindya, a pretty village that sprawls out among the foothills of the Balkans, his house is roughly three hoursfrom Sofia.It’s a beautiful spot, the landscape thick with trees and flowers, but the village itself has been somewhat neglected in the past few decades. One sees the occasional building abandoned and reclaimed by nature, with branches poking out through windows and roofs. But this is by no means the full story: for every house that lies empty, there are many more thatshowa great deal of care and attention – not least, Tim’s. ‘Property prices here were extremely reasonable,’ he tells me. ‘I got divorced in Gascony and lost everything, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A good friend suggested looking in Bulgaria. It was the first house I saw, although I looked at 30 or more. The view was perfect and the house was very affordable. Although I was fairly unconvinced at first, I soon fell in love with both the house and the country.’ Tim has tried to retain as much of the original building as possible, with the exterior almost exactly as he found it. The interior is mainly red, white and green – afterthe national flag – and he’srefrained from modernising things too much for fear of losing the house’s ambience. It’s a gesture appreciated by the previous owners, who still feel a strong attachment to the place.‘They come round every yearto put up a necrologue,’ Tim says. ‘It’s a strange and rather charming tradition. On the anniversary of a death, they hang a picture and a small biography on the house.Itsounds macabre, butitisn’treally.’ By and large, though, the vistas from his home are full of life: the best encompasses the village, the church and the tree-covered Balkans rising behind them. Despite varioussetbacks – precipitated by the downfall of communism and a rush towards urbanisation – rural Bulgaria is recovering its confidence, Tim feels, and Mindya in particular. While it’s doubtless a quieter pace of life, there are still thingsto see and do (including an annual rock concert). For his part, Tim likes to walk his rescue dogs, Bob and Bunny, around the neighbourhood and hit the wonderfully diverse local markets. There’s a weekly one in Gorna Oryahovitsa that’s a favourite: it was there that he was surprised by the sculpture that now sits on his balcony. Opposite: the gingham cupboard covers in the kitchen add a dash of homespun cosiness – as do Tim’s collection of handmade Bulgarian bowls, each design distinctive to the village where he bought it. Top: the balcony boasts views across Mindya. When he first moved here, he ferried across his classic French fare, which didn’t fit in with the place’s warmly traditional feel. Among the Bulgarian pieces he bought to replace them are the house’s wicker furniture, like this rocking chair and breakfast table, and works by local makers – the sculpture on the balcony, for instance, was made by an art student in Gorna Oryahovitsa. ‘I got that for a euro!’ ‘ 83
Opposite: Tim’s bedroom wall is hung with a couple of portraits by a local artist. Ironically, the typically Ukrainian slippers under the chair are one of the few English things in the house, once belonging to Tim’s father. Right: sitting quietly in a corner of Tim’s office, painted an unassuming white, is a traditional tall stove called a ‘ jamal’: these sentries can be found in every room. The wicker cow’s head on the wooden bench, meanwhile, was made by an artist in Kyiv Having left most of his possessions behind, it makes sense that Tim’s spent a lot of time in flea markets recently – but they’re places he’s been drawn to all his life. ‘I have a great friend in Kyiv, and we were always hunting for things,scouring the markets, looking for anything that caught our eye,’ he tells me. Many of the place’s fabrics and finer details – a wicker cow’s head, for instance, which sits in Tim’s office – were bought in the Ukrainian capital, in happier times, over many visitsin the past 20 years. ‘Wewould find thingsin ourrespective countries and swap them, like a cultural exchange.’ He gestures to the red-and-white fabric on a chest in the bedroom as a stand-out example: ‘It’s typically Ukrainian: I call it a “pop-on” because you can pop it on anything and it works. It goes with the green wine jar on top, which we found locally.’ The result is a motley mixture of objects collected overthe years, enhanced by archetypal pieces nabbed from nearby. A striking instance of the latter sits in the end bedroom: a jamal, or stove, which resembles a wardrobe and reaches up to the ceiling. When he moved in, Tim also inherited an old Bulgarian blouse and apron, which nowhang on the back of a bedroom door: their contrasting shades of green – light jade next to a lime cabinet – remain just as he found them. Here and there among the locally sourced items gleam objectsriffing offthem,too, designed by Tim himself (with a little locally sourced help). His home is made up of three separate buildings: as you enter, on the right is the kitchen and bathroom; on the left is Tim’s bedroom and office, conjoined to the kitchen across a narrow central passage, which leads to a small simple garden, 85
Left: a green mirror – another treasure found already in situ – hangs on a wall in the spare room, which is lined with an archetypal Balkan fabric. Opposite: Tim uses the restored barn for photography workshops and holiday rentals. Winter visitors shelter in the warmth of its box beds, piled with blankets from the Rhodope mountains. The painted chest stores further coverings, as well as Tim’s festival costumes, like the embroidered get-up reserved for Alphabet Day, celebrating the creation in Bulgaria of the Cyrillic script. To the wood burner’s right sit a trio of milking stools, while to its left, an icon case lies empty – Tim’s still in the market for a suitable artwork festooned with walnuts in the autumn. A stone terrace runs along the kitchen wall: this is the place to drink in those views of the church and mountains. In the corneris a log shed and, beside it, an old barn, now converted into a guest room and library. ‘With the barn especially, I wanted something really cosy, with traditional Eastern European beds,’ Tim says. These were built by a local carpenter, and the cosiness achieved through insulation for warm winters and cool summers. (The wood burner is an invaluable ally; unsurprisingly, it was fetched from nearby – and ‘no more than 30 euros!’) Positioned side by side, flush against a far wall, each bed is ensconced in its own deep recess, allowing for relative privacy. They’re piled up high with blankets – many homemade, all brightly coloured with intricate designs. ‘Winters are very cold here.’ Along with these softer pieces, Tim’s collected a fair few paintings and somewhat larger objects of interest. ‘The paintings in the single bedroom are mainly of the nearby town, Veliko Tarnovo,’ he says. ‘The old dairy cart, used to deliver milk and cheese in the village, came to me from a neighbour. The plates above the cooker I’ve collected from all overthe region: each village has its own distinct style.’ The old white table in the kitchen was reclaimed from a derelict house, alongwith the sideboard,whichwas a hybrid oftwo different pieces of furniture. Thissums up Tim’stalent: bringing together a range of ideas and making them work –whetherit’s eccentric with traditional, or contemporary with quintessential.Instead of creating friction, they harmonise. ‘The previous ownerslove what I’ve done here,’ says Tim warmly. ‘It always brings a tear to their eyes’ ª 86
Sail acrossto Gelliceaux Bay on theCaribbean island of Mustique, and it won’t be long before you spot a set of gleaming white edges poking out from its summit like an unlikely ice cap. That would be the work of architect Alain Bouvier: a minimalist marvel quite apart from its peers, all breezy brickwork and modish monochrome.But, pondered its exacting owner, howto furnish this pared-back paradise?Ultimately,she opted for a polar palette,sparsely populating her padwith hand-blown sculptures, milky faux leather and frosted glass. A cool Caroline Roux observes proceedings at close range. Photography: Bryan Adams 88
Previous pages: detailing the pearly exterior is a smattering of open brickwork breeze filters – a remnant of the Morrocan inspiration that architect Alain Bouvier retained from the building’s original design. All the concrete outdoor furniture – marking the four alfresco dining areas – was made in situ, including the round table and benches out front. Guarding them is a quartet of ‘Euphorbia ingens’ cacti, while their appropriately named paler cousins, ‘Euphorbia lacteal’, peer over the balcony above. Opposite: the house, says Veere Grenney, is ‘an exercise in geometry’, designed to set its shadows against the Carribean island’s blue skies. Above: it was the owner’s idea that the terrazzo floor, laid by Luca Zaggia, should pick up a hint of the green outside, like the shadowy colours of this coconut tree. Sittings editor: Gianluca Longo 91
T he 100 orso houses on the exclusive island of Mustique don’tshare a singular architecturalstyle. The original handful built by Oliver Messel from the late 1950s onwards – starting, of course, with Princess Margaret’s own islandlife Petit Trianon – are cute and cottagey, their gingerbread-style theatricality betraying their creator’s origins as a stage designer. Then there are those by the Swedish engineer Arne Hasselqvist, including the hidden-away Mandalay, designed for David Bowie, with the ancient carved pillars of a Buddhist temple standing at its heart. Or Paolo Piva’s 650 square metres of Japanese living seen through an Italian lens. It’s even called Ca’ d’Oro. And then, perched above the island’s most beautiful beach – Gelliceaux Bay – stands an anomaly of gleaming white cubes. Partiallywrappedwith an L-shaped pool and nestling in a heady garden of cacti and grasses, it is a modest (for these parts) and Modernistretreat,where rooms floweffortlessly into courtyards. Views are vignetted through its architectural geometry, and coconut palms leave sharp black shadows on the dazzling white walls. The current owner moved in in time for Christmas 2020 – though it was far from being her first home on the island. There’d been a string of rentals, she tells me, after she fell for Mustique one idyllic summer. ‘We originally came for a family holiday, when the childrenwere really young. That was years ago.’ Severalspectacularrenovations ensued, each decision steeped in acquired knowledge about what works best here. ‘Life on Mustique is aboutsimplicity,’ saysthe owner,who swimsin the turquoise waters of Gelliceaux Bay every morning when the beach is still at its empty best. ‘I’ve learned not to do anything too complicated. Many fabrics don’t weather well in the humidity. You can’t have art. You need to respectthe climate. The longerI’m here, the fewer mistakes I make.’ The house, completed in 2006, was originally designed for the Frenchman Pierre Marais by his son, in a style that respected his father’s Moroccan Below: a white vase by Saint-Louis is quite at home in this dappled open lounge, set with a pair of woven ‘Boma’ sofas by Kettal. The glass sculpture, bottom, is by Ritsue Mishima. Opposite: on a balcony, a pair of vintage Pierre Paulin armchairs have been resprayed and upholstered in white faux leather. Another ‘Euphorbia ingens’ points skyward beside a pair of hand-blown glass stools by Anthony Todd 92
Opposite: a sun-lounger by Kettal overlooks the pool, which wraps round the building in an L-shape. ‘As you turn the corner,’ says the owner, ‘it’s like swimming into the jungle.’ Right: as part of her effort to make the house as calm and clutter-free as possible, the owner wanted the bed – yet more integrated concrete furniture – to float above the floor. Since most art couldn’t survive the island’s humidity, she went for a pair of elegant glass objets instead. Both were made in the 1960s by Finnish artists: the ‘Rare Iceberg’ vase, to the left, is by Tapio Wirkkala, while the right-hand bowl is from Timo Sarpaneva’s “Finlandia” series connections. ‘It felt quite north African, with windows fitted with breeze-filtering brickwork rather than glass,’ says the architect Alain Bouvier. Based in London, he hasworked on many ofthe owner’s homes, starting with a major project in the Boltons more than 20 years ago. ‘We have established a very strong relationship,’ he says. ‘We go into every detail in every room, right down to the cupboards.’ Here, he added 200 square metres of living space to the existing 400 – and the main bedroom took up more than a third of that extra space. ‘It has,’ says Bouvier with a smile, ‘an exceptionally nice view.’ The planning regulations, he tells me, are surprisingly very simple around these parts. ‘Don’t annoy your neighbours. Don’t go above two storeys.’ Though the house has three, one is embedded down below, its back firmly set into the rocky cliff face. While Bouvier got on with the architecture, designer Veere Grenney busied himself with the interior and New Zealand-based landscape artist Andy Hamilton oversaw the garden. ‘The owner has a very distinct sense of order and balance,’ says Grenney. ‘She is disciplined about what she puts into a room: it has to be appropriate forthe context.’ Excepting some green heavy linen in the living room, here the pair went for all-white furniture. (Unlike many ofthe Mustique houses, youwill never find this one available to rent.) Hamilton, from his antipodean base, worked the most remotely. ‘I have a naturalistic approach to howI compose plants,’ he says over the phone from Auckland. ‘But for Mustique, cacti and succulents were a no-brainer. All the water there is desalinated, and it can be very dry,though it is often humid.’ He built up three layers 95
of plants, starting with a background of local, native shrubs including clusia, sea grape and scaevola. ‘And Euphorbia tirucalli,’ he says, ‘which has lovely fine, pendulous foliage.’ Next come prickly pears and the upstanding pachycereus, which can growto over head height, and the gorgeous Kalanchoe beharensis from Madagascar with their massive felty grey elephant ears. And then it’s the grasses, including the huge sprays of pennisetum with its vibrant green stems and fluffy pale heads. ‘WhatI’m mostinterested in is mixing textures and differentshades of green,’ says Hamilton, who met the owner when he was working for the king of plant layering, Tom Stuart-Smith. Serving to further usher the outside in, a single terrazzo has been expertly lain throughout both by Italian craftsmen. Indeed, aside from the contractor, Tony Milsom, most of the supplies and expertise came from outside Mustique. Hamilton called in plants from both the nearby St Vincent and Barbados, as well as Miami and the Netherlands;the majestic oval bath in the main bedroom, meanwhile, was sent from England, and had to be winched into place. The owner shows me a photograph ofthe living room filledwith huge cartons. ‘Thatwasthe day everything arrived on the boat,’she says with a laugh. ‘Usually I find myself working around herwonderful art collection,’saysGrenney, who has been designing homes for the owner for over 20 years. Here, the only pieces are her selection of clear glass objets by masters of the material like Ritsue Mishima and Timo Sarpaneva. ‘The house itself is the artwork,’ he continues. ‘An extraordinary architectural statement completely nestled into the vegetation.’ It’s true: you can hardly see the house from the beach. ‘And then you swim out to sea, and you suddenly glimpse these beautiful white cubes set against a blue sky’ ª To contact Alain Bouvier’s practice, ring 020 7928 1288, or visit aba-international. co.uk. Veere Grenney. Ring 020 7351 7170, or visit veeregrenney.com. Andy Hamilton. Visit andyhamiltonstudio.com Below: sampling the shaded coconut grove beyond, the muted green of the living room’s linen cushions feels almost gaudy here. Opposite: the garden teems with far-flung plants, from the long-limbed Madagascan ‘Allaudia procera’, paired with east African fountain grass, poking out the central square, to the round-leafed ‘Clusia guttifera’ and ‘Kalanchoe beharensis’ that flank the far staircase 96
CARRIAGE Surely it was the end of the line for the clapped-out mid-century Caledonian Sleeper cars rusting away in a disused iron works in County Durham... Enterinterior designer Sara Oliver, taskedwith transforming them intoBritain’s only private train, one to be steeped in the golden age oftravel. After all, muses Amy Sherlock,what else do Titanic-style marquetry,squishy sofas and a de luxe Deco drinks trolley signal? Letthe good timesroll! Photography: Michael Sinclair 98