The World of Interiors May 2022

For all sorts of reasons I have been thinking a great deal lately about the idea of home as sanctuary. That’s in no small part because in my new London life I don’t yet have one, or at least a place of permanence. In my New York apartment (WoI Nov 2014), I had conspired with my great friends and Mongiardino scions Laura Sartori Rimini and Roberto Peregalli on an evocative interior that evoked Cecil Beaton by way of Mario Praz. By the time I’d finished with it, however, it was late period Stephen Tennant by way of the Collyer brothers. Frankly, I miss the mess. Equally biographical is the elegantly referential home of Léopold and Géraldine Meyer, showcased in this issue (page 166). As Liam Freeman reports, the Meyers collaborated with Laurent…

TYLER MITCHELL Channelled through his teenage hobby of skateboarding, Tyler developed an obsession with film-making and photography. He shot his very first Vogue cover story (on Beyoncé) at just 23 years old and hopes his success will ‘stand as an example of the possibility to break through for some kid somewhere’. For this issue, Tyler visited Mark Ronson and Grace Gummer’s Manhattan town house (page 204). DERRY MOORE The seed of photography was planted in Derry’s mind when he first came across work by Atget and by Bill Brandt (with whom he later studied). His images can now be found in Moma in New York and the National Gallery in London. Always on the hunt for ‘beautiful and surprising rooms’, Derry shot the home of Luke Edward Hall and Duncan Campbell (page 216). MATTHIEU…

MY BELGIAN grandmother once tried to teach me how to make lace. It didn’t take either of us long to realise that I lacked the necessary qualities, which seemed to include the patience of a saint. Suffice to say, then, that just the idea of recreating those intricate, gossamer-like designs in wood all but brings me out in a cold sweat. Yet for Julien Feller, a 27-year-old carver who specialises in this kind of trompe l’oeil, the process is clearly a meditative one. As he confesses over Zoom from his workshop in southeast Belgium: ‘When I was studying carving, my nickname was The Monk. It was a Catholic school, so the image of the monk was this silent person working with great focus.’ What Feller considers his masterpiece to date is…

WHEN thinking about dinner, which, like most sensible people, I do a lot of the time, I often start with herbs. Don’t underestimate herbs! I was taught this by Rose Gray, the visionary chef and teacher who, together with Ruth Rogers, started the River Café in 1987, and was pivotal in changing the way so many of us cook and eat. ‘I want handfuls, not pinches,’ she said, when teaching me to make a fish stew and I had returned from the garden with a few mean sprigs of parsley and fennel. Whenever I cooked with her, I was on herb duty – fresh, never dried – and I soon realised it wasn’t a role to be taken lightly. Don’t underestimate herbs. No other ingredient offers so much so immediately but…