Purification Process

It’s not unusual to live for a while in a property that you’ve bought and plan to renovate. It’s a useful way to get a feel for the place, see where the light falls, and explore what you might need from the house in the future – even if it’s not yet decorated to your taste. In the case of the east London house that Victoria Spicer shares with her partner Friday O’Flaherty, though, the gap between their natural aesthetic and where they were living was a chasm: as the co-founder of furniture and design dealer Monument, sculptural shapes, design-as-art and a lean towards brutalism are Spicer’s stock in trade. But the house? Floral wallpaper and patterned carpet that had been untouched for several decades – yet filled with the couple’s incredible collection of contemporary furniture and objects.

With a baby on the way, Spicer and O’Flaherty co-opted the help of Josie de Guzman and Jess Murphy of Studio Jey – all of them New Zealanders in London – to get started on the long-awaited renovation and rethink of the house’s interiors. This happened on a much deeper level than simply ripping out the dated decor. “There was a real separation of the ground floor rooms, and they wanted to have a better connection: with a young one coming into the fold, they wanted to make sure that one parent wasn’t stuck in an enclosed kitchen or living room,” says de Guzman. “It just helps so much with day-to-day life if you’re overlapping in an open-plan space.”

The house was pretty compact at 4.6m wide and 7.8m from front to back – de Guzman describes it as “incredibly spatially challenged” – so there was nothing to waste. The reconfiguration saw the ground floor opened up entirely, so that the separate living room, dining room and kitchen are now one space. Sliding doors open onto the garden, further opening up sightlines and inviting the outside in.

Murphy says that “there was no character there to enhance or renew, so it was a case of stripping it right back. It was going to be filled with these quite beautiful pieces of furniture, objects and sculpture, so it was about coming up with a nice foundation for that collection.” The white walls might feel gallery-like, but there’s more of a warmth to the quarry-tiled floor (which also runs a little way outside, on to a deep step) and oak kitchen cabinets. Textural subtleties are at play, from the grooved cabinet fronts to the brushed surface of the stainless-steel island that knocks back its shine and delivers a pleasingly uneven patina.

The same sensibility is found in the adjacent living area, where a deep-pile chocolate-brown rug from Nordic Knots plays off a leather Togo sofa by Ligne Roset and some stainless-steel chairs – a prototype of Reinhard Müller’s angular D8 chair and a pair of Christoph R Siebrasse Plug-in chairs. The gallery aesthetic is amped up further by a plinth topped with a 1980s limestone sculpture by Belgian artist Michel Hoppe.

The layout was also reconfigured on the first floor, with the smallest bedroom turned into a dressing area giving useful extra storage instead; while the attic has been converted to create a spacious new suite, accessed by a contemporary staircase in birch ply with an off-white powder-coated balustrade.

Studio Jey took a unifying approach to the two bathrooms, cladding both with a grid of off-white mosaic tiles on the walls and floors, plus entirely white brassware and sanitaryware, all together instilling a sense of calm and order. It takes effort to maintain such a spare and monolithic look, and de Guzman and Murphy have ensured that storage is plentiful, from the bathrooms to the bedroom eaves, to the utility area cleverly tucked next to the staircase on the ground floor.

Space may have been an issue in this house, but the repetition of materials and finishes throughout has created a sense of continuity that all helps give the illusion of something more generous. Functional, flexible and sociable, this is as much a family home as it is a sophisticated showcase for important design pieces. Here, the results of Spicer’s very particular eye now have breathing room to be properly appreciated.