This week I sat with interior designer Carlos Garcia to learn more about his collaboration with Cheffins. He has worked his magic curating a fabulous room for the Cambridge based Auctioneers with items from their Fine Arts Sale. Discover all the details of this clever collab on today’s blog post.
Dear Carlos, how this collaboration with Cheffins come to be?
I was approached by Cheffins in Cambridge, one of the country’s leading firms of independent Auctioneers and Valuers to curate a room with items from their Fine Arts and 20th Century Art sale.
Having at your disposal a wonderful array of antiques as well as a fantastic collection of 20th-century British art was no doubt enticing enough. The objective however was, not only to produce a beautiful room set, but to look homely, approachable, accessible and to encourage and inspire people to use auction houses to buy antiques. Hence why the proposal of using one of the rooms in my own country house seemed perfectly suitable.
Can you tell us a little bit about the process of designing the room?
Comfort is at the very heart of everything I design and I was determined to convey this when curating this room: To make the room inviting, to strike a balance between formality and comfort. This was to be a room, not a set.
Another important factor in my design is to give rooms a “settled status”: I like rooms to ‘belong’ to the building they are in, almost as if they always were there. I tend to achieve this by carefully mixing antiques from different periods and styles and by introducing antique and vintage textiles to live comfortably with new fabrics. It is what I call “generational layering”.
This is also applicable to the artwork used in the room, a mix of beautiful antique pieces and wonderful 20th-century British art by Edward Bawden, John Minton, Keith Vaughan, Adrian Heath and Robert MacBryde amongst others.
Cushions and Lampshades are all by Susan Deliss: antique suzani cushions as well as those made from fabrics from her own collection. The beautiful block printed and ikat lampshades were produced exclusively for the room.
I chose Christopher Horwood, who has previously captured my country house as well as other projects to photograph the room. Christopher has over 10 years of experience working with renowned interior designers.
The pieces on the room will be available on Cheffins Fine Art Sale on the 6th and 7th of March.
Read my conversation with Carlos Garcia here.
