WORKING THE ROOM | ROOMS & GARDENS | CABANA MAGAZINE
In this new series, we spotlight notable rooms, asking interior designers to share the details behind their scheme, along with insider tips and a few trade secrets. This week, Jamb founders Will Fisher and Charlotte Freemantle discuss the silk-wrapped bedroom they created for Wow!house 2024.
INTERVIEW BY LUCREZIA LUCAS | ROOMS & GARDENS | 14 JUNE 2024
The Starting Point: Palmira Bed
There was clear intent from the start, Charlotte says, with the room centering on Jamb's new four poster, the Palmira Bed. The timing felt serendipitous as the pair had been working on the design when they received the commission from Wow!house.
"We’re very much, 'things made and found', combining ‘antique’ with things that interest us and things we make and create," Will says. "The bed really is the most beautiful, dry, crusty country house surface. It's the centrepiece. We want to transport the viewer to the end of the grand-country house era."
The Color: Dusky Pink
Inspiration for the color and texture of the room’s distinctive wall covering came from a Velázquez painting of Queen Isabel that Charlotte remembers being struck by. "She was painted in a very opulent black robe against this silk draped behind her. A silk of this wonderful dusky pink [with] undertones of brown in it," Charlotte says. "I knew that was going to be the color. And then it was about finding the right silk, finding the right pink - one that didn’t have too much yellow in it, or too much blue in it." Charlotte found the silk she was looking for at Claremont furnishings.
Applied to the walls by Hepzabeth from London's Textile Wall Company, entire lengths of silk were meticulously sewn together, stretched across the room to ensure they remained straight, and attached to batons.
The Furniture: Coromandel Lacquer Cabinet
"When you look at the Velázquez painting," Charlotte notes, "you see the robes of the Queen, this dark contrast, and that was another turning point - when Will said, 'we have to have this Coromandel cabinet in the room'." The lacquer cabinet in question, an 18th-century antique found at auction, is made from a highly prized 17th-century Chinese screen, which would have been exported to the UK and transformed into a piece of “living, breathing, functional furniture," Will says.
The contrast of textures was a key consideration in the scheme - "the sheen of the silk, the dryness of the bed, the deep luxurious Coromandel lacquer cabinet" - as was the concept of travel, cultural exchange and “worldliness”.
The Decorative Details: Japanese Screens and Red-Linen Lampshades
The principal bedroom also features a set of beautiful Japanese screens, featuring hunting hawks in a monochrome palette with small splashes of red. "[There are] beautiful fawns, ambers and whites, but the ropes that are holding their beaks are duck-egg blue and red, so I wanted to pull the reds from the screens," Charlotte says. "So I got these two beautiful red linen lamp-shades, custom hand-made from Claremont Milano red linen to follow the Capello shape of our vellum shades."
The Textiles: Hand-made Pleats and Hand-printed Shawls
Charlotte wanted the room to have an elegant restraint. "There’s a deep teal green on the bed and then a soft stone canopy created by Emma Stewart in London, who does bed-dressings for us. It’s all hand-pleated. It’s incredible - you can tell by the way the pleats fall and how tight they are that it could only have been done by hand." Elsewhere, hand-printed Indian shawls add touches of pattern. "Pops of magenta, teal and deep blue pull together the colors in the rest of the room."
The Architectural Details: Fireplace and Wooden Mouldings
Fireplace: The room features a striking, expertly reproduced Lutyens-era fireplace, which follows an English country house tradition that if a fireplace was repurposed from one room to the next, carpenters would often take the bolection moulding, cut it and put the keystone in to make it wider. The couple then added 18th-century, duck-egg tiles, "not just for their reflectiveness and softness, but also to give an uneven surface so it gives another contrast of sheen".
Wooden Mouldings: Charlotte and Will are passionate about detail. Instead of painting their wooden architectural mouldings, they bleached the wood "to make it look almost like driftwood". This pale, matte wood is offset by the darker tones and sheens elsewhere. "Chimney pieces, door surrounds, they’re so fundamental to framing a room," advises Will. You can’t set your stage without these details. [They] give it a feeling of gravitas, that you’re in a credible environment."
Read More: Discover full details of items and fabrics in Jamb's Wow!house room.
Wow!house 2024
You can visit Jamb's Primary Bedroom at the 2024 Wow!house showcase, taking place 4 June - 4 July at Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour.
For 20% off tickets, use the discount code WOWCABANA.
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