Passers-by would have to have been very deeply immersed in their iPhones to have missed the swathes of faux bourgainvillea tumbling down the front of the Cole & Son pop up on Paris’s Rue de Seine earlier this year. The occasion was Déco Off, one of the most enjoyable interior-design events in the universe, which takes place each January on the city’s Left Bank.
This is the Paris of La Palette, favoured hang-out of Picasso, Cézanne and Braque, of Madeleine Castaing and Serge Gainsbourg, and is a far cry from the aisles of an out-of-town exhibition centre.
Instead, visitors explore the shops dotted throughout the maze of streets around St Germain that managed to avoid Baron Haussmann’s energetic boulevardisation of the city in the 19th century. For a few days, galleries that for the rest of the year sell contemporary art and antiques are transformed into temporary showrooms displaying new collections of fabric, wallpaper and lighting.
The vividly pink blooms demonstrated the capacity of colour to transport you somewhere else, in this case from crisp Paris in January to the sunny streets of Seville in high summer. It was the architecture and horticulture of the Spanish city that inspired Cole & Son’s exciting new collection of wallpapers, a fact that explains its coherence and remarkable sense of place.
The launch is typical of the big, bold and confident approach of the historic brand that has brought us everything from the work of legendary British designer David Hicks to the surrealistic Italian artist Piero Fornasetti. True to form, the new pieces have the potential to be transformative.
The common denominator of so many of Cole & Son’s collections is not only the bold use of glorious colours, but larger-than-life motifs that, in many cases, bear little relation to the scale of a domestic interior. Polite, chintzy florals these most certainly aren’t.
Anyone who has been to Seville will find the designs familiar; they offer a heady mix of orange blossom, geraniums and jasmine, together with patterns inspired by the city’s rich decorative heritage, gardens and architecture. They are exactly the sort of joyous, over-the-top designs that have the capacity to bring even the dullest space to life with and extraordinary richness of detail. Cole & Son — www.cole-and-son.com
A Nina Campbell-designed bedroom where comfort and beauty go hand-in-hand
Nina Campbell combines comfort and calm in this harmonious bedroom scheme. Amelia Thorpe takes a closer look.
Credit: Gavin Houghton - designer's room
The Gavin Houghton drawing room with wit, elegance and silk wallpaper
Gavin Houghton's brief for the drawing room of a London art dealer was simple: do whatever you like, so long
Credit: Holly Frean / hollyfrean.com
Owls, elephants and monkeys are no longer just for the nursery
Furry and feathery creatures are here to stay.
-
Injecting colour, pattern and character into a once-plain sitting roomBooks, art and textiles transformed a once-characterless space into a warm, inviting sitting room.
-
Say no to boring walls: Six choices of paint and paper which will get people talkingAmelia Thorpe picks out some glorious alternatives to just painting everything white.
-
'Not cheap... but cheaper than a divorce lawyer': Why it pays to hire a consultant to choose the perfect paint colourDriven to distraction by paint charts? A colour consultant could be the answer for anyone befuddled by choosing the right hue, says Giles Kime.
-
Room with a cru — how an 'enduring legacy of lockdown' is the latest must have in interior designLong gone are the dusty cellars of the past. Now is the time to make the place you store your wine as pleasurable as drinking it.
-
The secret to transforming an awkwardly shaped roomCave Interiors turned the awkwardly shaped sitting room of an Edwardian house into a warm and welcoming space.
-
A gloomy kitchen entirely re-created as a cosy living spaceWhen Nicole Salvesen and Mary Graham were asked to redecorate a country house in Berkshire, the first task was to turn a dark space into a colourful sitting room.
-
A living room that's a lesson in how to restore lost character in a historic spaceNicola Harding used rich colours and textures to enhance the historic character of a Jacobean house in Berkshire.
-
The slipper chair: How one of America's great designers produced a classic of armless funThe slipper chair might have its roots in the 18th century, but it owes its compact, convivial appeal to Billy Baldwin, a giant of 20th-century American interior design.
