“This dining room of a country home in Somerset is technically the main entrance hall, which was previously just a sparsely furnished thoroughfare,” says Christian Bense, who studied interior design in his native South Africa and has spent the past decade working in London, where he founded his namesake studio in 2020. To make the space more functional, he included a piano, an antique wine cabinet and a seating area. Then, he says, he gave the room “a moodier level of city sophistication” with striking pieces, like a black bar cabinet attributed to Otto Schultz, a 1stDibs find. “It was the first thing that we bought, and it put a line in the sand as to the feel for this room, which was bold and sexy,” Bense says. He paired Alfred Newall’s Canon dining table, a contemporary take on 19th-century refectory tables, with a suite of Niels Otto Møller rosewood chairs that the clients had purchased on 1stDibs. As counterbalances to the dark rectilinear furniture, Bense chose light-hued accent pieces with sinuous forms: a sculpted mirror custom designed by Martin Huxford, for above the fireplace; Lindsey Adelman’s nine-globe Branching Bubble chandelier; and a Snake and Pomegranate rug by Studio Shamshiri. “All the other rooms had a floral or botanical theme to them, but we wanted this room to have an ‘other side of Eden’ feel,” Bense says. “So, we introduced the serpent.”