Donne House

This stunning Victorian house with Edwardian additions was originally built in 1880, it is a perfect example of Victorian Gothic ‘Lite’. My brief was to complete the restoration upgrade and period repairs, as well as to redo the joinery and decorate the non-historic areas of the house from scratch. Whilst peeling off some horrible blue paisley-pattered wallpaper in the dining room, we happened upon an incredible classical frieze. We cleaned the frieze and were able to safeguard about sixty to seventy percent of it. On the wall underneath it we hung a warm sun-on-wheat-field coloured silk and trimmed the frieze top and bottom with gilt edging.The client wanted a traditional four-poster bed to be the main feature of the master bedroom, but one without frills. We had this frame made in early nineteenth-century style but with twenty-first century proportions, and dressed it in a gorgeous, Bennison hand-printed linen.