Inside Tobias Vernon’s deeply stylish Georgian townhouse in Bath

[upbeat music]

Every two to three days

there are things moving around in the townhouse.

I think I love the fact that it's just always evolving

and always changing.

That's part of the fun of it.

That looks good.

Do you think it needs something else here?

I mean I think I naturally have a short attention span.

If you tire of one quarter,

then you can kind of look to the next

and there's sort of something unexpected there

and something playful.

I am Tobias Vernon.

I am the founder of 8 Holland Street.

We are in 8 Holland Street's townhouse,

which is a guest house in the center of Bath.

[light music]

Creating an interior is a feeling.

Sometimes it's possible

to really explain why something doesn't work

and something does really work,

but sometimes it's just more abstract.

It's that idea of the kind of yin and yang

and that idea of creating a balance.

You need something hard next to something soft,

and something sculptural next to something angular,

and something abstract next to something figurative.

So you are always getting those different reference points.

This is a painting by Terry Frost.

I really like this piece

and I think we'll try hanging it upstairs.

We should actually try and hang this

somewhere near the Magistretti chair.

I mean this is gonna be a kind of crazy green corner, right?

We'll just be able to hold it up there and see how it looks.

So the kitchen is an example

of where we have really played with contrasting colors.

We had the kind of green chosen for the kitchen

and the bright yellow for the island.

The next thing that came to mind were the Shrigley posters

and again, they give these like incredible injections

of color that stops the green and the yellow

and the whiteish walls being too tasteful.

Yes, we've obviously considered colors

and how they work together,

but I also think that you can overly consider all of that,

and I perhaps shouldn't be saying that as a designer,

We worked with Plain English

on this simple kitchen and the island.

I think the interplay with the Vitsoe shelving is fantastic.

Actually. I haven't seen Vitsoe with Plain English before

and both are pieces of design that have a strong identity,

but actually they just work so seamlessly together.

This is like the main drawing room

or sitting room of the townhouse.

We painted all of the walls and skirting and woodwork

and cornice and ceiling

just kind of out in this quite soft off-white.

We worked to give it this sort of antique framework,

but for all of the kind of plethora

of modernist and contemporary pieces that we've put inside,

I love USM Haller

and all of their modular furniture just really create

a sense of playfulness alongside Richard Cook's

fantastic large oil painting of a Cornish landscape.

This is a photograph by Man Ray.

When you look up close, it's kind of one of those things

that's just very intriguing

and you have to really work out what's going on.

This is a illustration by John Broadley.

The drawing shows the door into the townhouse

here from Brock Street.

There's Elisabeth Frink, the sculptor,

sitting in the bath in the dressing room.

There's Charles and Ray Eames in the kitchen.

This is made from hundreds of bits of paper

and printouts all stuck together,

and everything's drawn with a Sharpie pen.

I was in India in Easter with a friend

and we were in the Maharaja's Palace

in Udaipur and there is a series of rooms

which are literally the spitting image

of this color combination.

You know, it's definitely not a paint scheme

I would live with.

I think it's kind of great as a space that you pass through.

I love the idea of putting really collectible fine objects

next to something vernacular and found.

This is the main bedroom suite.

There are a few particular highlights in this space.

The giant Victor Pasmore artwork over the bed

and the scale of it just feels like it's totally made

for measure offset by a Josef Frank pattern on the headboard,

the Guillerme et Chambron,

what they describe as their Bouvine Cabinet.

There's something slightly kind of medieval about it.

That's actually a very funny lamp

that I think I found on Etsy a few years ago,

which actually in a strange way looks quite cool

without the shade because then the bulb carrier

just almost looks like the top of a lighthouse.

Off the main bedroom we have a series of rooms,

including a dressing room and this shower room.

So I imagine this is a sort of collector's bathroom.

This is a ink drawing, which actually is a portrait

of the potter Bernard Leach.

There's a sort of slightly obscure French screen print

of some kind, but I think with, you know, the marble

and classical-like English fitting,

still, these kind of modernist touches just work so well.

Nothing jumps out at you, but there's just a great balance.

So this is the dressing room off the master bedroom.

The wallpaper is one of my favorite designs

by Peggy Angus, the textile designer.

The blue feels like that perfect framework

for the pared-down artworks that we've put into this room.

So there's a construction by the Irish painter,

Tony O'Malley, and then we have an André Derain drawing,

which I found last year in Marrakesh and I saw it,

but knew that this room needed something figurative.

The rug is pretty out there. It costs an arm and a leg.

It's contemporary, but woven now by Svenskt Tenn

I don't know what the creature is, but just totally adore this.

This is a drawing by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

He was a a painter

and he died incredibly young in a crash

when he was a pilot in the First World War.

I love the sort of low ceilings in this top floor, right?

It's an attic,

but it still has that kind of wonderful sense

of being kind of up in the loft.

So this is a small sitting room snug

with this kind of slightly crazy wallpaper.

The Noguchi floor lamp is a piece that I had in my cottage,

and then the rug was a very kind gift from Lucinda Chambers,

and that's a piece from the Colville Collection

which again, is just that like perfect shaggy-ness

that just works so well in this room.

You know, I love that feeling where people come and stay.

There are pieces to discover,

but also some kind of recognizable elements.

This is another suite on the top floor

of the townhouse.

As you walk into the room, yeah,

there's this really pretty vignette

with this rocking chair that we actually re-lacquered

and covered in a Christine Van Der Hurd's print.

The curtains are actually just a upholstery bouclé

and it doesn't look statement,

but at the same time it kind of just looks like

it could have been there forever and it's cozy.

There's almost like a checklist. I go through this room.

We've got the kind of quite simple geometric prints

above the bed.

There's this sort of fiberglass furniture

with the bedside tables,

and then there's a contemporary woven textile

by one of the artist Caterina Riccabona.

So I think all of those things

kind of fused together into this kind of wonderfully easy

but kind of complete whole.

This is one of my favorite rooms in the house,

although it by far is the smallest.

It's got this Voysey wallpaper

printed by somebody who's kind of revived

a lot of their designs in the U.S. at the moment.

This is a ebonized bed by Guillerme et Chambron,

which I think may be the coolest bed I've ever slept in.

And actually, this is the room I normally stay in

when I'm in the townhouse.

This sort of slightly cutesy but not cafe curtain

that's actually a designed from Kvadrat.

This isn't a home that somebody lives in all the time.

It's a space for our friends and artists

and guests to pass through and just to stay

for a night or two or three.

You can potentially be a bit more fanciful

and you can fill something with a few too many things

and people do walk in and they smile.

You see them do that and you see them kind of loosen up

and you see them let their shoulders down.

And this place is a bit of fantasy in a funny way.

[light music]