Bridge For Design Spring 2014 Bridge For Design Spring 2014 Issue | Seite 86

IN CONVERSATION | Nicholas Haslam

‘Some may raise on eyebrow
at the mere suggestion
of my being a minimalist’
sumptuous Baroque style, yet every inch of the room was decorated
entirely in white. Marie Antoinette’s dairy at Rambouillet had a
simple five-footed white marble table in a white room before a
rock-wild grotto, and much of the Louis XVI furniture and decoration
is as pared down as contemporary stuff. Just look at it without a
jaundiced eye.
One of my recent interiors in London (shown in the pictures on
these pages) was commissioned by the client under the sobriquet
of ‘Minimalist Baroque’: plain and pared down, but with a twist
of Haslam exuberance! The project had a Minimalist beginning:
it was a complete gut job. A classic four-bedroom townhouse was
reconfigured, luxuriantly, as the echt one-bedroom city pied-aterre.
I interpreted the unusual pairing of styles by exaggerating the
scale of the decoration: from elaborate, ornamental plasterwork
around the doorways, which is pure homage to Draper, to wide
stripes of marble in black and white on the floor of the entrance
hall. ►
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Bridge for Design Spring 2014