Carlow-born accessory designer and illustrator Rory Hutton’s Victorian home and studio in Cambridge …
I live in Cambridge with my husband in a tiny Victorian terraced cottage. We have moved six times in twelve years, living in an art deco mansion block, a Scottish tenement with sky high ceilings and an apartment carved out of an Victorian villa; we have tried everything!
Rory studied fashion design at Limerick School of Art and Design and design history at The National College of Art and Design.
Our current house is very modest, built in the 1870s for workers on the nearby railway. Sadly, it has lost some of its original features and has some ugly tiled fireplaces. However, it is in the city centre and it’s a great pleasure to be able to walk everywhere – this city is so picturesque, it’s like living in a postcard. We haven’t done much to the space, just filled it with our collections and our furniture, which is either antique or secondhand.
The bathroom with Georgian-style fretwork mirror, bamboo chair and embroidered linen.
Fresh flowers are a luxury I can’t live without, as is being surrounded by lots of books and beautiful things. I am a librarian’s son, so books have always been the backdrop to my life. My husband is half-Chinese and collects Chinese ceramics and works of art – decorative portraits of his ancestors dominate one wall. My taste is quite traditional – I collect and use Victorian majolica among a lot of other things. My collecting has always inspired my work.
The Laura Ashley sofa is from eBay, the round table another charity shop find. The antique French chair is upholstered with a favourite scarf, Orangery Garden.
Home is also my studio and I work from our living room. My business has developed slowly and steadily over the past ten years. Collaboration is at the heart of my work; I especially love working with museums and heritage institutions. Reinterpreting historical themes for modern audiences is a great privilege. My favourite commissions are the ones that commemorate anniversaries and celebrate the lives of great people. I have worked on anniversaries of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Noel Coward and Madame de Pompadour. Westminster Abbey commissioned me to design its Platinum Jubilee scarf and the team at Highgrove House to design a range of commemorative products to mark King Charles’ coronation.
Artworks by Rosie West and Emily Maude hang above a Staffordshire zebra, found at Portobello Market.
My Garden Collection, my most popular range, began as three silk scarves celebrating 20th-century gardeners Bunny Mellon, Vita Sackville-West and Lady Rhoda Birley. Through learning about these women and their stories I gardened vicariously. I love the interiors created and lived in by women such as Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Lancaster, Lady Diana Cooper and Sybil Connolly. Their homes referenced the grand French and English styles, yet were very personal and comfortable. They were evocative of an elegant style of living from a bygone era, which really appeals to me.
SEE MORE: Rory Hutton On The Importance Of Being Influenced, By Wilde
