SJ Axelby’s Interior Portraits: An Artist’s View of Designers’ Living Spaces

By SJ Axelby

An artist’s record of the homes of 89 leading creatives from interior designers to ceramicists, antiques dealers, florists and chefs.

SJ Axelby brings new life to interior portraiture, capturing in paint the favourite rooms of 89 leading creatives from interior designers to ceramicists and antiques dealers (and florists and chefs). A sumptuously illustrated record of a home or special project, each interior portrait is accompanied by a charming and quirky interview with the owner, in which we discover invaluable nuggets of design advice, cocktail choice, life hacks and so much more – all illustrated in watercolour by SJ.

There is a long tradition of painting rooms to provide a record of grand homes, giving a glimpse into the life and times of previous generations. Today there is a resurgence of interest in our living spaces, but there is no book in the tradition of illustrated room portraiture to inspire you. SJ Axelby's Interior Portraits will take you into multiple unique and colourful homes, seen through the artist’s eye.

Creating an authentic and characterful scheme is much like the composition of a painting: the shape, form, contrast, colour, pattern and texture all need to work in harmony. This pictorial guide includes not only Sarah-Jane’s original watercolours but scrapbook pages annotated with design wisdom from each room’s owners, which will enthuse and empower the reader to try new ideas in their own homes. It’s a creative who’s who of the international design world featuring mouth-watering compositions bursting with colour and pattern and displaying the true joy of a home that reflects its owner’s personality.

This book is a beautiful object with coloured edges, hand-painted endpapers and a ribbon. It’s intended as a scrapbook to dip into and discover something new every time you open it. With a foreword by Kit Kemp of Firmdale Hotels.

Just a few of the creatives featured:
Alexandra Tolstoy
Alice Stori Liechtenstein
Anna Spiro
Ashley Hicks
Ben Pentreath & Charlie McCormick
Cath Kidston Padgham
Erica Davies
Flora Soames
Henry Holland
Kit Kemp
Lucinda Chambers
Lulu Lytle
Luke Edward Hall & Duncan Campbell
Matilda Goad
Penny Morrison
Robert Kime
Skye McAlpine
Sophie Conran

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Oct 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781911682943

SJ Axelby

SJ Axelby has a degree in textile design and loves pattern, colour and interiors. She created the Room Portrait Club during lockdown; recent clients include Christie’s, Kit Kemp and Alexandra Tolstoy. Her work has featured in the Telegraph Stella Magazine, FT How to Spend It, the Liberty Book, Elle Decoration, The World of Interiors and Architectural Digest. She is now a full-time interior portrait artist working for designers, hoteliers and clients around the world.@sjaxelby @roomportraitclub

Book preview

Introduction

One of my earliest memories of childhood is sitting on an antique chair my grandfather had restored. I was enveloped in a William Morris Willow pattern, huddled up with my sister Kate. It was an unusual chair, it was giant, like a box, and one arm was lower than the rest. It was brilliant for hiding in. I look back now and wish I had a painting of that room and all the treasured objects in it that are long gone. I can still smell the house, a kind of furniture polish smell and slightly musty. I can feel, too, what it was like to sit in it, springing, and only just able to curl my hand around its arm. But it is hard to conjure up the rest of the space.

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I have long had a fascination with interiors. From an early age, when my parents came to tuck me in at night they would find me in a different spot. I rearranged my bedroom in multiple configurations, some more successful than others. They were antique dealers and the family business was antique restoration, so the cottage was always crammed with curiosities and latest finds. I was heavily influenced by my mother, glamorous with impeccable taste. Like many in the 1980s we were swathed in Laura Ashley florals, borders and frills. It was in this cottage that my love of interiors began and where I was given my first set of watercolour paints.

I love that interior portraiture is not a new phenomenon. The history of it fascinates me. In its earliest form in the 17th century it served to document the contents of a room, for example a library or a collection of art or objets. It then became the fashion in England and Europe for aristocrats to commission portraits to showcase their own homes, a status symbol if you like. I did just this with the painting of Schloss Hollenegg featured in this book (see here), recreating the interior portrait just as Rudolf von Alt did in the late 19th century. Architects of the time also had watercolours made of the interiors they designed. Almost like a sales brochure to lure in new clients, this became a portfolio of their own work. The cleverest creatives of today often use renderings to showcase a scheme for a client. In our society of reinvention a painting of a room, like a photograph, will immortalize the design that is likely to be changed every few years.

Like a room makeover I too reinvented myself. I embarked on this journey at the beginning of 2020. As it did for many, lockdown brought challenges for me. I started off the year seriously ill on an acute medical ward, with what doctors thought was either sepsis or acute inflammation caused by my Crohn’s disease. Fortunately it was the latter, but I couldn’t walk unaided and spent most of January bedridden. My immunotherapy was adjusted and thankfully I got better, finding a new zest for life (three weeks in bed will do that to you). I crammed in work to catch up on the interior design course I was taking at the KLC School of Design.

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Then I got the phone call that seemed to change everything. My doctor told me I needed to shield. I was bursting with new energy and suddenly I had nowhere to channel it! Feeling lost but determined not to waste this unexpected time, and confined to my studio, I started to paint the interiors I longed to be in. This is how my #sketchaday began. Each morning, fuelled by anxiety, I would push myself to paint interiors. I had lost a month of the year already and I was determined to use this new-found time and vigour. I gained momentum on Instagram and to my joy was noticed by the designers I had once longed to work for. Commissions and projects poured in and I was thrilled that I could work from the safe cocooning confines of my home. My intention was never to copy the design of the room, but to capture the feeling of it. The textures, the patterns, the exquisite way the designer has, layer after layer, curated the space.

SJ Axelby’s Interior Portraits features some of my favourite interior designers and creatives, from florists and chefs to ceramicists and antiques dealers. Each contributor is a delight to follow on Instagram, never failing to inspire me. I hope my paintings capture the essence of their style and share with you some fun and interesting insights along the way.

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@sjaxelby

@roomportraitclub

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The Interior Portraits

Penny Morrison

Passionate about rooms and how they make you feel since she was a child, Penny Morrison explained to me ‘anything visual gives me pleasure’. She has had an illustrious career in interior design, working for clients around the world, and has made a name for herself with unexpected juxtapositions and innovative use of colour. This trademark style led her to create her own range of wallpaper, furnishings and accessories available through The Fabric Collective. Penny has been a champion, mentor and kind ear to me since she found me while looking for some artwork for a project in Barbados. I shared my innermost ideas about this book with her and cannot begin to thank her enough for her guiding steer, enthusiasm and go-for-it attitude that helped me along the way. Her dining room, shown here, captures the essence of her style: poised and refined (but not stuffy), comfortable, wise, inviting and fun. Thank you Penny.

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Dinner with Penny

Describe your everyday china: I have lots of sets, but mostly use pink flower plates.

Best two colours together: Red and pink.

Describe your working style: Looking at what the client has and building from there.

Your happy place: In winter, in front of the fire with my dogs and cat; in summer, on my odd garden seats at sundown, listening to the birds nesting.

Interesting things to display on walls: Plates, framed vintage fabric panels and anything large.

Decorating tip: Always paint small rooms in one colour: walls, woodwork and doors.

Tell me something not a lot of people know about you: I have learned to enjoy solitude.

Dream dinner party guest: Barack Obama.

Tip for someone starting out in interior design: Look at everything around you, especially when in someone else’s house. Play the game of imagining what you would do to improve the room. Scour lots of design books and magazines.

Ways to create a successful display: Look at the space that needs filling. If you have large pictures, start with them and fill in the gaps with smaller pictures, prints or drawings with different frames. If there is still space, add an arrangement of plates, especially in bathrooms, bedrooms or the kitchen.

Favourite bloom: Roses.

Best items to grow in your greenhouse: Pelargoniums and root cuttings.

Favourite tipple: Gin martinis.

No image descriptionFrank de Biasi and Gene Meyer

This design duo is well known for their bold, eclectic look infused with the colours and stories of Morocco. They have used this flair to super effect in houses around the world, including their own, from Park Avenue to Miami, Paris and Tangier (featured here). Frank began his career at Christie’s in New York and then headed up the residential decorating team at Peter Marino Architect before setting up his own practice. Gene, a fashion designer for many years, now designs all manner of things for the home. I am particularly entranced by their Tangier home and have painted this many times. I was immediately drawn to the jewel-like colours of this room, and the Majolica plates adorning the walls that add character and texture.

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Tea with Frank and Gene

Tell me about your favourite colour combination: Green, green and more green. Frank Mint green and apple green together. Gene Any green combined with purple.

Describe your style: Frank Classical put together with beautiful found objects. I enjoy the hunt. Gene A bit hippie, a bit fancy.

Who influences your taste: Frank People who live life to the fullest. Gene My friends and relations – I’m lucky to have very stylish ones!

What do you collect: We collect Majolica plates. We love the rich, earthy colours mixed with the strong, green glazes and the whimsical leaf motifs.

Tell me something about you that not many people know: We met at a dinner party in Bridgehampton. We’re a Leo and Taurus mix, which is supposedly lethal together, but we’ve had a wonderful 25 years so far.

Share an object you use every day: Frank My clam-shell soap dish. Gene My Gloria Vanderbilt teacup and saucer.

Best advice given or received: Frank Move to Morocco. Gene You need a dog!

Place you would most love to design: Both El Minzah Hotel, Tangier.

Favourite style/era: Frank Art Deco with a dash of 19th century. Gene The Bloomsbury Group and Charleston House.

Favourite blooms: Frank Lady slipper orchid in black. Gene Dahlias.

Design tip: Frank Don’t be afraid. Gene Always inject the colour green in fashion or interiors. The colours of spring always add a joyful punch.

Happy place: Frank Tangier. Gene Anywhere with our dog, Oscar!

No image descriptionAshley Hicks

Brought up in the English countryside, Ashley Hicks has not quite managed to leave it yet, although he now spends as much time as possible in Milan. He designs interiors, makes objects to furnish them (like the totem below), paints their walls and photographs and writes about historic ones. His best-selling books include a memoir of his father and Buckingham Palace: The Interiors as well as a review of his own work in Rooms with a History: Interiors and their Inspirations. I adore this room in his Milan home; ensconced in pattern and colour, the room fizzes with charm.

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In conversation with Ashley

Describe your everyday china: Marbleized Faience d’Apt in an 18th-century shape.

Favourite colour combination: Right now, it’s dirty pink and jade green.

Tell me how you see your style: Historicist with modern twists.

Happy place: Wherever Martina (my girlfriend) is.

Destinations that inspire: Italy and India.

Favourite patterned fabric at the moment: Just now my favourite is Saz Velvet from the Cabana x Schumacher collection (my design!).

Tell me something not a lot of people know about you: I’m secretly an Icelandic antique dealer living in Innsbruck.

Object you use every day: My phone with its Angelica Hicks case.

Favourite bloom: A particularly beautiful Japanese tree peony called ‘Kamata Fuji’.

Tip for styling a relaxed lunch: Let Martina lay the table and then I dot it with single flowers in tiny vases.

The perfect weekend: Our first weekend in Rome after lockdown, almost alone in the Sistine Chapel.

Favourite object/textile you have designed: A totem I made for Martina with her own antique glass beads.

Best advice from your father: Don’t do what I do! No one ever heard of Mozart’s son.

Artists you adore: Mantegna, Sickert, Burne-Jones.

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