Instagram story viewer> @aimee_farrell> Posts

aimee_farrell

@aimee_farrell

19K

followers

3629

following

Homes ~ Design ~ Interiors
Homes & Design Editor @obsmagazine
‘Tuscan Rooms’ 📖 @rizzolibooks
Friends Events Committee @kettlesyard

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

In Epping, an open house founded on radical kindness.

“I just wanted to see what happens,” says Penny Rimbaud - poet, writer, punk, painter and activist - of the conception of Dial House in Essex.

Home to Rimbaud and artist Gee Vaucher for nearly sixty years it has played host to a revolving cast of visitors from friends to strangers.

Dial House features in a new exhibition, ‘Earthly Paradise’ at the William Morris Gallery (until March 27) - it also beautifully makes the case for compassion.

Read the full story in this Sunday’s @obsmagazine

Words: Rowan Moore
Photographs: @mark_anthony_fox

Picture editor: @agentortiz
Homes and design editor: @aimee_farrell
Editor: @moshakis by @aimee_farrell

13k

86

11 days ago

Outside Paris, a rural estate where designers go to dream.

@charlottetaylr & @paulineleprince_studio have been increasingly spending their time at Le Grand Parc, a family retreat complete with a small farm holding and a giant vegetable garden deep in the French countryside.

It’s a place to escape their busy respective design practices in London and Paris - and to be immersed in nature.

“This place forces you to relax,” says Taylor. “Stress doesn’t touch me so much when I’m there.”

Pick up this Sunday’s @obsmagazine for the full story.

Words: @kin_woo
Pictures: @maureenme
Picture editor: @agentortiz
Homes & design editor: @aimee_farrell
Editor: @moshakis by @aimee_farrell

2k

42

18 days ago

“This book is about rooms - and every room tells a story” - @antoniomonfreda

‘Tuscan Rooms: Interiors from the heartland of the Renaissance’ is a rich visual journey into some of Tuscany’s most enticing and evocative homes - captured by @antoniomonfreda, with accompanying texts written by me.

From grand Medici villas to secluded country farmhouses - many seen in these pages for the first time - this new volume celebrates an age old Tuscan way of living, but also reveals the deep individuality of each inhabitant.

Launching this September, ‘Tuscan Rooms’ is now available to pre-order from @cabanamagazine

Photography by @antoniomonfreda
Words by @aimee_farrell
Introduction by @martinamondadori
Published by @rizzolibooks (Sept 16) by @aimee_farrell

364

34

a year ago

Inside Margaret Howell’s house of stillness and light

A master of the edit, for half a century the British designer, 80, has built an empire on her ability to distill things down to their purest essence – be it a navy woollen sweater or the perfect white shirt. “Design has to be real, not frivolous,” she says.

That precise approach also permeates her home in South London, a converted Victorian coach house filled with everything from Alvar Alto and Shaker furniture, to Liberty carpets and her favourite jumble sale finds.

“This house feels comfortable the way our shirts do – well-crafted but unstarched,” she says.

For the full story pick up this Sunday’s @obsmagazine

Margaret Howell Life and Work is published by Shueisha on Oct 22.

Words: @aimee_farrell
Pictures: @yukisugiura.photo
Editor: @moshakis by @aimee_farrell

5k

46

4 days ago

Inside Margaret Howell’s house of stillness and light

The British designer Margaret Howell, 80, first acquired her converted Victorian coach house in South London in 2017.

A master of the edit, for half a century Howell has built an empire on her ability to distill things down to their purest essence. "Design has to be real, not frivolous," she says.

This precise approach also permeates her home, which is filled with everything from Alvar Alto and Shaker furniture, to Liberty carpets and her favourite jumble sale finds.

“This house feels comfortable the way our shirts do – well-crafted but unstarched,” she says.

Images taken from the forthcoming book, Margaret Howell Life and Work published by Shueisha on October 22 (margarethowell.co.uk)

For the full story pick up this Sunday’s @obsmagazine or read at our link in bio.

Words: @aimee_farrell
Pictures: @yukisugiura.photo (courtesy of Shueisha)
Editor: @moshakis by @aimee_farrell

2k

21

6 days ago

At Bryn Pader (“hill of prayer”) in Wales, a stone farmhouse formed from granite boulders close to a medieval pilgrim route, the master craftsman and cabin maker @rollodunfordwood has found a place where he can refashion the creative idyll of his own childhood.

Filled with handmade and inherited pieces (and without central heating), he says: “I can enjoy birdsong with a cup of coffee, and be there for my kids. Togetherness with the people we love is the most important thing in life. And this house nurtures that.”

It’s here that he’s created his first beautifully hewn collection of objects for the home, including a wooden box, candlesticks and a bowl, released this month.

Pick up @obsmagazine for the full story

Words: @carolynasome
Pictures: @philhewitt by @aimee_farrell

109

9

a month ago

At home with Miriam Howitt, the architect charged with designing the interiors of the original Barbican Estate show houses (with a budget of £10 per flat).

Now 97, Howitt has created everything from the first open-plan railway carriage to buses, private residences, hotel interiors, a Heathrow airport lounge and - together with her late husband, fellow architect David Howitt - their marvellous 1960’s London home (which features the original Barbican show house carpet).

Howitt is one of the inspirations behind a new furniture collection designed by the @barbicancentre with @madedotcom launching this @l_d_f_official

Read the full story in today’s @obsmagazine

Words: @rowanwgmoore
Pictures: @alixelay by @aimee_farrell

451

14

a month ago

“Home is a place of refuge for me,” says classical architect George Saumarez Smith of his Victorian villa in Winchester, Hampshire.

Filled with colour and pattern it is guided by the same romantic principle as the classical style homes he creates for his @adamarchitecture clients - namely, that you should practice being patient with buildings. This is a house that has slowly unfurled.

Read the full story in today’s @obsmagazine

Words: @elizabethjmetcalfe
Pictures: @emlibendixen by @aimee_farrell

155

3

2 months ago

Escape to Elba: The textile artist @isabel_farchy takes us on a colour saturated trip to the Tuscan island of Elba. It’s here that Farchy, who lives in London, takes inspiration for her gossamer-light patchwork wall hangings, in a palette that recalls the island’s earthy, sun-scorched terrain.

Every summer as a child Farchy would stay in her grandmother’s house, a one-time shepherd’s hut that has been an artistic retreat through the generations.

“It’s quite an ascetic house,” she says. “There’s no fancy decoration. The beds are camp beds, the shower is a garden hose.”

And yet, it’s a beauty.

Read the full story in today’s @obsmagazine

Words: @lauramaytodd
Pictures: @danielcivetta by @aimee_farrell

180

16

2 months ago

In Suffolk, a villa filled with a collector’s treasures

The antique dealer Benjamin Smith has transformed his Victorian home in Lowestoft into a trove of curiosities, where (almost) everything is for sale, finds @aimee_farrell

'Smith has a stock rejoinder for anyone who delves into the specifics of his business, School for Scandal (@theschoolforscandal). “I tell them I buy and sell weird shit,” he says. Smith’s Suffolk home, a lateral apartment stretching across a pair of Victorian villas in the coastal town of Lowestoft – tells another, far richer story.

'What began with rescuing antiquarian books from Norwich skips, and a fascination with 20th-century medical paraphernalia (everything from dentist chairs to laboratory cabinets), by 2012 had evolved into a full-scale London business. “As things sold, I’d need to replace them – and then something else would spark my interest,” says Smith, who studied fine art at the Chelsea School of Art, before embarking on a fleeting career as a professional arbitrage gambler (the proceeds of which fuelled the collecting).'

Read the full feature at the link in bio.

Photographer @jasperfry
Picture editor @agentortiz
Editor @moshakis by @aimee_farrell

799

23

2 months ago

Sometimes the algorithm serves up gold. That’s certainly the case with the brilliantly bonkers Suffolk home of Benjamin Smith; a real East Anglian wunderkammer.

The antique dealer - who goes by @theschoolforscandal - lives in a Victorian seaside villa which doubles as a by-appointment showroom for his insatiable collecting (what he calls “the habit”).

Read the story of how it evolved from a single flat (& former squat) into a grand three-bedroom family home that’s bursting with collected treasures in today’s @obsmagazine

Expertly photographed by @jasperfry taken in Lowestoft by @aimee_farrell

650

36

2 months ago

The Jersey cottage that sparked a homecoming for a London family

In 2021, the designer Naemi Prahm, 44, and her husband, architect Tim Norman, 43, began restoring a modest granite cottage in the yard of his family’s 17th-century farm on Jersey, in the Channel Islands.

What started as a side project and a rescue mission to restore the property at the request of Norman’s parents – they are the 12th generation to occupy the main, adjoining farmhouse – slowly evolved into something altogether more transformative.

Read more at our link in bio as The Observer's Homes and Design Editor @aimee_farrell spoke to the couple to discover how they transformed a derelict 17th-century cottage on Jersey into a family home and studio.

Video and photography by @marcusowenquigley by @aimee_farrell

135

4

2 months ago