DE S IGN CENTRE
ONES TO WATCH
Discovering exceptional talent is always a pleasure. Here are just a few of the new generation of interior design practices who bring their unbounded creativity, flair and imagination to every project. By Ticky Hedley-Dent
DECURATE INTERIORS
Following a successful career in PR, Nadine Finnigan retrained as an interior designer and set up Decurate Interiors in 2018 – a portmanteau that nods to her love of decorating alongside her passion for curating antique finds. Her studio has a focus on residential projects in London and the Cotswolds.
What inspires you? Nature, travel, art and history – I majored in the latter at university and constantly come back to it through my creative process.
Do you have a specific starting point for a project? My design process usually begins with an object. This will then inspire and inform the scheme of that room or space. I find this approach limitless in terms of allowing your creativity to flow during the conceptual phase.
What projects are you working on at the moment? I have just completed a family home in Kensington, as well as our own Cotswolds barn, and am currently working on the renovation of a cottage in West Oxfordshire.
What project are you most proud of? A 17th-century, Grade-II listed Cotswolds family home, which I worked on and completed during the pandemic. It was my first major project and a total labour of love for all involved. I was in my career infancy, and I am forever grateful to the client for taking a chance on me.
Describe your style in three words Colourful, layered and comfortably chic.
What’s your latest discovery at the Design Centre? On a recent visit, it was a joy to see Bunny Williams’ beautiful pieces at the Paolo Moschino showroom – I hope to incorporate her rattan console table into a future project. I’ve long admired Bunny’s decorating style, which is so timelessly chic, and I am thrilled her collection has finally reached our shores.
MORRIS STUDIO
Tom Morris spent the first decade of his career as a design journalist and storytelling is at the heart of his design process. His Hoxton-based practice was founded in 2018 and now numbers three people.
What inspires you? Inspiration comes from everything – travel, art, literature. All projects we work on start with quite an in-depth stage of research when we turn to lots of different media to start getting a picture together of what a project will end up looking like.
Is there any business advice you wish you’d known when you started out? That there is no real “right” way of doing things. Interior design is quite a secretive industry but also fundamentally a creative one – it's absolutely fine running a studio to suit how you want to operate it. That took me a while to learn.
What projects are you working on at the moment? We are working on a beautiful manor house in Suffolk (supposedly where Wallis Simpson romanced Prince Edward) and three houses around London.
What project are you most proud of? Every one is different. One of our first projects, near to London Fields, made the cover of House & Garden, which was a very nice achievement. Then earlier this year we opened our first commercial project, a chocolate bar shop in Covent Garden called Barnaby.
What’s your latest discovery at the Design Centre? I'm very keen on Métaphores fabrics at Elitis, including a wool criss-cross fabric called ‘Hamac Sable’. Plus, a bouncy textured stripe by Inga Sempé for Kvadrat called ‘Fil-à-Fil’, and everything at Pierre Frey, always.
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