A Georgian house in Islington full of clever colour combinations
In this lovely corner of Islington, rows of handsome Georgian townhouses stand proudly in wide, leafy streets. Beyond one unassuming gate however, its ruffled blinds visible from the gardens below, is a particular treasure; the photographer Harry Carr's three floor maisonette, decorated by his friend, the artist Christabel MacGreevy. The duo's collaboration began serendipitously. Harry had been looking for a London base, somewhere to lay down roots after years of travelling the world, shooting campaigns for Gucci, Roksanda, Ferragamo, and Fendi (to name a few). ‘The house felt like an absolute no-go zone,’ he recalls of seeing the place for the first time, with its splintering floorboards and peeling walls, but gut instinct prevailed and by June the keys were his. ‘For the first few months I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by yellowing walls and fiberglass. Not exactly the height of glamour,’ he laughs.
Before Harry's house, Christabel had already transformed her own rental flat using paint as her primary tool to give the place character and soul. She had also been involved in several friends' renovations, researching and moodboarding for them. ‘I’m very inspired by Christabel’s grasp of colour as an artist and designer,’ says Harry. ‘I wanted to bring that into my house in a way that felt kind of romantic and camp, without going too Liberace.’
‘My brief from Harry was simple,’ laughs Christabel. ‘It was essentially, “I like what you did with your flat, so feel free to do the same with mine.”
As the artist took on Harry's project, what began as friendly advice - helping him sift through eBay bids and paint swatches - evolved into a full interior renovation. ‘Eventually, I was given full reign,’ she enthuses. ‘I thought initially I was just going to make a few concepts for him, maybe do some Google hunts and make suggestions. But I became much more involved - he was out of the country, and I had begun liaising with the builders. It was an exciting learning curve.’ Christabel - whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses collage, printmaking, textiles and more recently, ceramic sculpture - took to her first interior design project with gusto, reconfiguring the layout and injecting the space with the inventive energy and idiosyncrasy of her work.
‘When I first visited the house I was struck by the abundance of light. I knew immediately it could take quite a lot of colour,’ she says. There were a few must-haves. Initial designs centred around a warm orange that eventually enveloped the central stairwell. ‘I knew this colour had to be in this house,’ Christabel explains. ‘By using this shade in the central part of the home the space became anchored, letting the other colours around it sing. It is astonishing to me how much colour changes the feeling of a space without doing anything structural.’
The project unfolded at a whirlwind pace through 2023. ‘What I loved about working with Harry,’ Christabel reflects. ‘Was how I could suggest a pink chitz sofa with a blue wall, and it would be an instant yes. He dares to be different, with that rare English flamboyance. It's why we're friends.’ This spirit is particularly in evidence in the first floor sitting room, painted a duck egg blue from Papers & Paints with ruffled chartreuse blinds in glossy a moiré jacquard taffeta from Turnell and Gigon. Dainty mouldings were applied to the walls to frame a work by the fashion photographer Tim Walker and a vintage Suzani. A similar motif was echoed on the bespoke upholstery of the sofa, an Facebook Marketplace find, reupholstered in a pink fabric from Romo with coral-red piping.
Where budget was tight she leant on affordable solutions. Much of the furniture was sourced secondhand from antiques markets, The Saleroom and eBay. ‘Because Harry and I are friends, it was a collaborative effort to hunt down the right objects, which was fun.’ To keep costs down floorboards were painted, white in the sitting room, and black in the hall. ‘I love a painted floorboard,’ she adds, ‘it gives spaces a new dimension while saving costs and keeping original floors intact, which I think are rather pretty, even with their billowing cracks.’
Upstairs the biggest spatial transformation was in Harry’s bedroom, which was reorganised to accommodate a tiny, ingenious wet room, carved from the void of the adjacent staircase and accessed by a ladder to the right of the bed. ‘Because the bedroom is already a bold colour, we made the little en-suite a really clean, bright marble chamber,’ says Harry. On the walls of the bedroom Christabel convinced him to exhibit his ‘Beach’ series of photography - portraits taken during his travels to queer nudist beaches from Fire Island to Sitges. ‘What's the point of making stuff if you can't enjoy it in your home now and again?’
In both the downstairs loo and main bathroom Christabel used classic Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler wallpaper designs - the smaller scale ‘Wendle Forest’ in aqua downstairs, and larger scale ‘Squiggle’ in lemon yellow upstairs - balancing the old fashioned feeling of the design with glossy tongue-and-groove panelling and flashes of red. The antique Chanel cabinet on the wall of the main bathroom is ‘Harry in a nutshell,’ Christabel laughs. ‘A bit old school and prim but also glam. I wanted the scheme to have moments of texture and drama. Nothing matches, but it works.’