An interior designer's refreshingly pared-back London flat
Every object has a voice - and, just as with choral music, the key to harmony is elegant arrangement. Being able to avoid the cacophony of clutter is a skill with which few are endowed, but interior designer Georgie Stogdon is one of them. Her home in north London is a masterclass in the kind of decorating many aspire to: not too much, nor too little. Careful, clever consonance.
Such clarity is hard to pull off, but Georgie's eye was honed young. With an antique dealer for a mother and an auctioneer for a grandfather, much of her childhood was spent being 'carted to sale rooms and looking at beautiful things'. It stood her in good stead when, in 2015, having decided to leave the charity sector, she Googled interior design jobs. Seeing the role of assistant to Rose Uniacke advertised, she applied - and landed the job.
Later, working with Steven Rodel (now creative director of Guy Goodfellow Interiors and Architectural Design) would give Georgie the skills to run a project herself, but the three years she spent with Rose proved invaluable training. Though she was not working on the design aspect of projects, she says, 'I picked everything up through osmosis - seeing the way that Rose thought and the spaces she created.' In her own home, the influence of Rose - the pin-up of pared-back interiors and queen of understated statement - is clear. Nothing in this late-Victorian split-level flat is extraneous.
Readers will be reassured to learn, however, that for all the gorgeousness, perfection lies in the imperfections here. For every grand flourish - an 18th-century Spanish refectory table, a Derbyshire fossil chimneypiece - there is something lower key (though nonetheless lovely). The stuffed seagull on top of a pantry cupboard has only one eye, for instance, and the vast textile looming over the dining table has 'a nice amount of holes in it', says Georgie.
All this is to say that she is not drawn to market value, instead following her heart. It's not a name or a date she seeks but 'a feeling'. Her absolute favourite thing in the house cost £4: a pair of Chinese silk paintings of horses hanging in the sitting room, which she found in a charity shop. Georgie has put her talent for treasure-hunting to good use, selling the riches she cannot quite squeeze into her home via her online shop Curios. It is suitably named, not just for the rarities stocked on its virtual shelves, but because Georgie's love of things is shaped by her curiosity about the stories behind them: 'Where did you come from? Who made you? How many hands have touched you? How many people have admired you?'
Her eye for a gem was also what landed Georgie this flat. It was one of the first places that she and her partner Olly viewed when considering a move in 2021. 'I fell in love with the scale of it,' she says. 'It's like a house in the sky.' On the second floor of a tall townhouse and wending into the loft space, its views of a zigzagging tessellation of London roofs and of Arsenal's Emirates stadium are staggering. 'On match day, it's buzzing,' says Georgie. Olly has a season ticket. 'I can hear when they score,' she adds with a smile. 'And know whether he'll be coming home via the pub'. Such is Olly's devotion that she's even made one small decorative concession - a framed photograph of Thierry Henry: 'He's a beautiful man..'
The flat needed a lot of work, though nothing major structurally. That said, Georgie did decide to replace the uppermost staircase to the third floor. 'I didn't feel bad - it was ugly and blocked the light,' she says, pointing to an extraordinary sash window nearly three metres tall, fitted with 18 panes of ever-so-slightly uneven 19th-century glass. The replacement staircase she designed is equally extraordinary - a helter-skelter helix of oak, with open treads and slim handrails that cast shifting shadows on the soaring walls. It is extravagantly, lavishly beautiful (if currently a touch impractical for the couple's two-year-old daughter Winter, whose bedroom is at the top of it). The incontrovertible modernism of the structure could feel at odds with the history of the property, but the purity of the new marries quietly with the classicism of the building's Victorian construction. It is a feeling echoed throughout, in fact, where walls in creamy white 'Galao Il' by Francesca's Paints are the backdrop to the meticulously chosen objects and artworks.
Staircase notwithstanding, Georgie is an expert tweaker, knowing which small changes will make a big difference. Take the downstairs loo, where she lowered the ceiling just enough to ensure the balcony above it could be extended overhead. It is in this room, too, that an unwanted marble shelf from the sitting room, where it was 'too shallow and useless', has been repurposed into an ultra opulent windowsill. 'You'd be mad to spend the cash to make that from scratch, but it's quite fun,' she says.
In fact, almost everything in the flat is repurposed or antique. Georgie says that often, a single item will be the starting point for a scheme around which ideas bloom. In the main, this is born out of practicality; this entire project was an exercise in allocating a relatively strict budget. In the kitchen, for example, Georgie saved on cabinets (combining Howden's carcasses with customised oak fronts), but splashed out on the stone worktops and splashback. The exquisitely mottled green Verde Antigua marble she chose is, by her own admission, a 'showstopper'. It meant little money was left over for much else in there, but that is not an issue for Georgie. 'My aesthetic is spare. I like leaving a few key pieces to do the talking,' she explains. Talking does not seem quite the right word. In this flat, everything sings.
Georgie Stogdon: georgiestogdon.com
Jake Curtis1/7Under the shelf of cups and bowls made by Laura Hamilton of Bird in the Hand, a splashback and worktop in eye-catching Verde Antigua marble are showcased against Howden's cabinets with plain custom oak doors. Sleek 'Mast wall lights by Astro and a plaster 'Cone' pendant from Rose Uniacke contrast with the weathered texture of an old butcher's block.
Jake Curtis2/7The model boat on the original stone chimneypiece belonged to Georgie's grandfather, a keen sailor, who found it in a Provençal brocante. He gave it to Georgie and Olly's daughter Winter when she was born.
Jake Curtis3/7A chunky helter-skelter helix of oak frame and open treads are paired with slim metal handrails in the sinuous staircase designed by Georgie to make the most of the light from the tall sash window. The antique plafonnier light is from Retrouvius.
Jake Curtis4/7Walls in a waterproof tadelakt finish are the backdrop for an antique fireclay bath with a mudstone base from a Devon reclamation yard. Beside it stands a Welsh oak stool that came from Georgie's grandmother. On an Edwardian armchair in a Merchant & Mills linen, an antique kilim adds rich colour and picks up on the ceiling in 'Adoration Rose' by Francesca's Paints. An opaline glass pendant from James Iles Antiques creates a soft glow.
Jake Curtis5/7The bath is placed in front of an arched niche, as is the shower - these were added by Georgie to bring a sense of symmetry to the room. A marble shower tray, made to her design, is teamed with Lefroy Brooks fittings and a curtain in Cloth House linen.
Jake Curtis6/7Above a marble basin from Ebay is an 18th-century Italian mirror from Jonathan Lee.
Jake Curtis7/7An antique Swedish folk chair, an alabaster plafonnier light from Robert Kime and an original Herbert Terry 1227 Anglepoise lamp on a table with a skirt in James Hare's terracotta 'Orissa' silk are set off by walls in Francesca's Paints' Galao II.
