More recently, after 15 years of their tenure as custodians of the household, Christine and William have begun to yearn for more permanence. And so began a year of magical stitching, during which Christine reassembled the room. An inspiring visit from Louise Richards, director of Bennison Fabrics, sparked a textile-led renovation that began in a once-underused sitting room that doubled as Christine’s editing suite. Here, sash windows are clad in blousy folds of Bennison’s ‘Daisy’ linen, with dome interlining to ward off drafts (a must for Kristin as a Florida blow-in).
A large George Smith sofa is wrapped in a soft pink vintage Rio Grande wool rug, sourced by Kristin in New Mexico, and piled with striped bolster cushions, some of which feature the late Geoffrey Bennison’s signature square ends. This embrace of patterned fabrics is nostalgic for Kristin, who grew up in a bohemian ranch-style home built by her parents on Florida’s Indian River. The romance she brings to the rooms of the vicarage also reflects her varied creative life.
After working as a designer at Calvin Klein in New York, she moved to London in the late 1980s, wrote a book about seasonal home decor and then gradually gravitated towards interior style and image making. ‘I work fluidly,’ she says, pointing to a mannequin draped in a painterly botanical canvas that she left in the rain, strewn with roses, which she outlined with her brush where they lay. ‘The rhythm of painting is part of my process,’ she explains. Perfection is not the goal, but capturing fleeting moments of natural beauty is.
Christine traced her love of creating back to her mother, who trained as an actor and later channeled her creative energies into their home, once lovingly building a dollhouse for her two daughters. In the master bedroom, Christine added an Ikea four-poster curved canopy, made from wrought iron by a local craftsman in an arched shape specifically for the period of the house. It’s smartly fitted with Bennison Fabrics’ finely rendered, Regency-style ditsy floral ‘Petites Fleurs’ linen, each panel crafted with couture precision and secured with a ribbon reminiscent of corsetry.
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The room is made up of Christine’s most treasured possessions: folk art from her childhood home, a pair of Staffordshire figurines, and framed patchwork art—a nod to Gloria Vanderbilt’s 1970s patchwork-filled room. Christine likens home to a patchwork quilt – lovingly piecing together a lifetime of experiences with people, places and things.
In the summer, she paints on the rooftop outside her studio, occasionally climbing a nearby staircase to the 16th-century bell tower of an interconnected church, evoking memories of childhood tree castles. ‘This is a storybook house,’ she says. ‘That’s my perch – and I have the whole playground to myself.’
