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When Garden Corner was purchased by new owners we were asked to supply designs for nearly every room on every floor of this large house. Apart from the front door, this impressive house is not typical Voysey from the outside. It occupies a plot overlooking the Thames to the front and Chelsea Physic Garden to it's side.
When I viewed the house it was an empty shell, apart from some built in furniture. But it was an absolute gem of Voysey interiors. The house is huge internally, with many rooms on each of several floors. I was lucky enough to spend nearly 2 days here, virtually on my own, measuring everything. Coupled with the archcitects plans my job was to flesh out the designs for the new furniture required through out the house. The client's main contractor handled the production & installations. At some point I'll break this large page up into several pages to make it easier to read.
Office kitchenette |
GF Kitchen elevation |
GF Kitchen plan |
As there were so many designs for this project we'll just show you a few to give you a flavour. The initial choice faced by the client was to either go for new light oak furniture, so you could easily see what was new & what was old, or to colour & polish the new furniture to match in with the existing oak furnishings. The latter course was chosen.
So all of these colour designs reflect the fact that they were to be in a dark oak finish. All the original metalwork was to be reproduced for the new furniture & interiors.
The above LH photo shows a small upper floor office kitchenette. The middle & RH photos show the GF kitchen, which wasn't the main kitchen. This was more of an 'entertaining' kitchen, as it was next to the large library room. I have never designed a kitchen in such a small awkwardly shaped room in my life. The furniture combines all Voysey's touches, from Shaker door panels with chamfered detailing, strap hinges, handles, typical cornices, finished off with black stone worktops.
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There were so many bedrooms that needed furniture, from wardrobes of various types, to dressing tables, drawers, shelfs, etc. The wardrobes generally followed the plan of their height matching the door cornices / picture rails in each room. The robes exteriors used typical Voysey details seen around the house; strap hinges & fittings, Shaker panels with chamfered details. The mid cross rails in each door were particularly nicely shaped, to look very elegant.
5 door wardrobe |
Double wardrobes |
Walk-in closet robes |
The top LH photo shows a large 5 door wardrobe, giving lots of storage & having a large presence in the room. The middle photo shows a couple of double robes which had to fitted in either side of a chimney breast. The RH photo shows a walk-in closet robe with chests of drawers.
As with any wardrobes the interiors can be fitted out as you wish, with full height or double hanging, shelves, drawers, baskets, shoe rails, tie rails, etc etc. We even got to include a walk-in closet wardrobe, shown top RH, in a small room between the master bedroom & en-suite. The pull down hanging rails are counter balanced to pull down easily when full of clothes. Maybe a little modern for a Voysey fan ? Who knows, but most Voysey house owners I've met are keen on modern convenience & practicality as well as the looks.
Double wardrobes with dressing table |
Plan |
Wardrobes & dressing table |
Wardrobes & drawers |
The top wardrobes design was for a double robe with a dressing table coming off it, shown on the plan. This meant the robe door nearest the corner had to be a 'stable' door, ie it opens above the desk top ( but is only practical to have full height hanging in).
The top floor attic rooms proved more of a challenge, with sloped ceilings, to plan furniture to make the most of the space. The above LH photo shows a nice double robe with dressing table, & a weird niche in the corner fitted with a couple of oak shelves.
The above RH photo shows a 3 door wardrobe, making the most of the available width, with a double chest of drawers under the eaves. Some chunky oak shelves added more storage / display space to an area that would otherwise be dead space.
Bathroom |
Bathroom plan |
Empty bathroom |
There were several bathrooms & en-suites to plan for the house. They had to look 'Voysey' but yet be practical with modern conveniences. Again some were tricky in the attic rooms with sloped ceilings. There were 2 bathrooms identical in plan, on 2 floors. You could not ask for a more awkward room to plan a bathroom in; there was an angled wall with a chimney breast, the WC waste pipe along the floor & a large window!
The solution works well I think. There was a built-in vanity unit in one corner, with a black stone worktop & under-mounted basin. A large mirror was placed above this, to bounce light around the room; plus it has a couple of small minimalist lamps fitted to it. The client at this stage was undecided whether to use concealed cistern WCs or back mounted cisterns on the pans (as shown). While concealed would have looked much neater, they do present access problems for servicing. The back of the WC had to be built out anyway to hide the WC waste pipe along the floor.
Panelling, behind the WC, matched the oak of the vanity unit & extended around the walls to the bath. With the black stone worktops & matching upstands following the same line around the walls, this visually linked everything together. And also provided lots of 'deck' space for displaying / storing bath sundries. The bath was boxed in with Oak, and a matching stone splashback fitted to the back & 2 side walls, for protection while bathing, which came up to the same height as the upstand on the vanity unit to tie everything visually together.
Vanity unit 405 |
Bathroom plan 405 |
Vanity unit |
Vanity unit |
Just another few designs for varous WC rooms & en-suite vanity units. All with black stone worktops & matching upstands, under-mounted basins, large minimal mirrors to bounce light around the smaller rooms.
Stairs bench original photo |
Stairs space existing |
New design |
One of the photos often reproduced from Garden Corner is the sofa bench, at the top of one of the stairs, with the elongated corner post. This had disappeared with time and the elongated post had been shortened. A new bench had to be re-designed using the existing timber.
sofa original photo |
Chesterfield sofa |
The photo above LH shows the living room in a contemporary photo. It shows the oak chesterfield sofa Voysey designed for here, which we have since reporduced. See the furniture section for more inforamtion & photos.
Hopefully the above designs will give you a taste for the wide range of rooms & furniture we can design in Voysey's style. Please feel free to contact us to discuss your project further.