The house is now dyed with color, which runs through Harriet’s veins. Although the walls are mostly decorated in a calm combination of lime render and breathable paint, there are plays of color in every room. ‘When I see a color that speaks to me I have a physical reaction. It’s like a shock and it can be very overwhelming,’ she says, adding that the particular combination of yellow and green makes her feel physically ill. ‘But when they work, they lift the soul.’
The deep serices – ripening on sofa covers and cushions throughout the house – are a point and nod to her father and the trousers they wore to dinner. Golden tones run like threads through the drawing room’s ceiling panels and metallic ground. Wallpaper A splashback in the library that bounces light around the kitchen. ‘These are the colors that fill me with joy,’ she says.
After poring over ancient maps of the area, Harriet finds a landscape littered with bricks—the bones of a farmyard once twice that size. After they excavated, they used it to build the walls that now shelter her garden from the winds from the South Downs. This is the first garden he has designed from scratch, having been obsessed with nature since childhood. It has a formal structure, marked by brick pathways revealing a series of outdoor rooms that bring both austerity and a sense of comfort: ‘I like the feeling of enclosure and privacy in the garden.’ The borders are filled with a riot of pink and white roses, hollyhocks, anemones, and thistles, their cheery femininity echoing the colors that run amok in the interior rooms. ‘Nature has already designed everything – Color combinationsStructures, silhouettes. I guess I’m just trying to bring a little more order to the chaos.’
Harriet is also ready for her next transformation. She collaborated with Plain English, with whom she worked in the kitchen, pantry and dressing room. She also has ambitions for a new paint collection, and intentions to return to textile design, and is in the midst of rebranding her company. As well as all this, she has been invited to enter her garden in the Sussex Heritage Trust Awards – not bad for a first attempt. ‘As a woman, a mother and an artist I have always been fascinated by change. Like the nymph, who was transformed into a laurel tree to escape the advances of Apollo,’ she says. ‘Who knows? The next time you see me, leaves may be bursting from my hands.’
Harriet Anstruther Studio: harrietanstruther.com | Tom Turner Architects: tomturnerarchitects.com
