5 New Wallpapers That Will Take Your Room Back To Nature
Interior designer Michael S. Smith has created a series of new wallpapers for de Gournay.
Interior designer Michael S. Smith has created a series of new wallpapers for de Gournay.
According to interior designer Michael S. Smith, certain elements involved in decorating have the feel of magic. Among them he counts wallpaper, with its ability to lend flat surfaces the illusion of depth. A new collection of five wallpapers of Smith’s own design launches this season in collaboration with de Gournay, a British company that specializes in custom, hand-painted panels. “It’s all ideas I’ve been carrying around in my head, things I’ve wanted to use for a long time,” says the Los Angeles–based Smith, who is best known for redecorating the Oval Office and White House residential quarters for the Obamas. “To put them all together as an arsenal or box of crayons is amazing.”
“Michael is one of our most longstanding clients,” says Hannah Cecil Gurney, de Gournay’s director, whose father, Claud Cecil Gurney, founded the company in the mid-1980s. “He came to us and said, Look, if I’m wanting this particular kind of look and feel for wall coverings that I can’t currently find, then it would be silly not to offer them to the world.”Each of the wallpapers in Smith’s series draws inspiration from the natural world, be it the softly coloured stone of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia or the bird-filled trees on the tiled murals at Lisbon’s Palácio dos Marqueses de Fronteira. Smith took the idea for Botanical Studies from 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus’s studio, which was hung with prints and engravings of heliotrope, gardenia and other flora.
In the spirit of Smith’s polished eclecticism, de Gournay invited five decorators, makers and curators from varied backgrounds to each use one of the wallpapers in the context of their own work. The English antique dealer Edward Hurst chose Botanical Studies for the bedroom of a client’s Dorset manor house, pairing the panels with a Chinese black-and-gold lacquer cabinet set on a Chippendale-period stand and a neoclassical George III canopy bed. “It sort of vibrates in the room,” says Hurst of the paper.
Ceramic artist Peter Ting, co-founder of Ting-Ying gallery, hung Pantheon, an intricate design that recalls natural stone, at home, alongside his collection of artworks and porcelain. He immediately noticed the paper’s partial glazing, “as if it has been polished by centuries of touching, like real marble would in a powerful and spiritual place like the Pantheon.”
British-born Ghanaian furniture designer Kusheda Mensah used Uki Hana, a wallpaper inspired by the chrysanthemums of Edo-period Japanese artworks, to create an immersive environment within a London creative space. Mensah set the wallpaper against her own curvilinear, modular furniture. The panels are gilded with a golden-brown copper leaf at the bottom that gives way to a lighter aluminium leaf toward the top, mimicking the soft, tarnished gleam of 17th-century Japanese folding screens. Mensah says she was surprised by de Gournay’s level of customization: “One of the designers just got out her paintbrush and literally started drawing flowers onto the wallpaper to expand the pattern and print.”
“They’re game for anything as long as it’s grounded in fundamental quality,” says Smith of de Gournay, which gives clients the opportunity to collaborate with its team of in-house designers and painters. “I felt entirely included in the creative process,” says Amanda Brooks, who used Nordic Garden, Smith’s interpretation of a rococo-era Swedish wallpaper, to decorate a temporary retail space next door to her Oxfordshire home-goods shop, Cutter Brooks. “We changed the colour of a couple of birds and some berries, moved motifs from one panel to another and altered the deep teal colour to better match my shop merchandise,” she says. British design dealer Jermaine Gallacher, meanwhile, took Braganza, a wallpaper that references porcelain tile, off the wall. He suspended the paper on movable panels in his London showroom, its tile-like grid acting as a backdrop for sets of his own creation.
Smith says seeing the diversity of responses to his designs was inspiring. He partly credits de Gournay’s success with a broad resurgence of interest in wallpaper. “After years of a kind of minimalist thing,” he says, “people are realising how pattern and colour can make a room so much more beautiful.”
Reprinted by permission of WSJ. Magazine. Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: August 29, 2021
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
Amrish Maharaj undid a century of hodgepodge alterations while navigating strict conservation rules
Haberfield, a charming slice of suburbia in what locals call Sydney’s “inner west” region, is miles from the landmarks like the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, and isn’t famous for multimillion-dollar waterfront mansions. What it is known for, however, is fiercely protecting its architectural identity.
After an uproar in the 1970s led by local residents—who were fed up with period homes getting unsympathetic makeovers—the National Trust created the Haberfield heritage conservation area in the mid-1980s. As a result, the suburb of approximately 6,500 people has one of Sydney’s best-kept streetscapes.The heritage designation has been a win for preserving the past, but has created challenges for architects tasked with making Haberfield’s homes more family-friendly, sustainable and sellable.
Architect Amrish Maharaj was hired by his clients, owners Ramy and Sarah Azzam of ML Constructions, to modernise a single-storey Federation dwelling—an era of Australian architecture between approximately 1890 and 1915. Although its bones dated back to the turn of the last century, the Haberfield home, coined Glencoe, had already undergone a number of objectionable changes before conservation rules had come in. The design was stuck between two time periods.
“Its original roof and chimneys had been removed and replaced with a post-1943 hipped roof clad in terracotta tiles. The length of the house had been doubled with the addition of a substantial rear extension. A small skillion roof was put over the front veranda, metal balustrading and the front verandah detailing had also been amended, removing the original timber work,” Maharaj said.
“The previous work appeared to have focused on increasing the number of rooms, and not improving the spaces within,” he added. From the entry, a dark central hallway cut the house in half, splitting four bedrooms and a bathroom to the north from an additional bedroom, an enclosed lounge room, dining room and kitchen to the south.
Despite the patchwork of renovations and extensions over the years, planning regulations still remained strict for the team attempting to bring the residence into the 21st century.
“We had an initial concept, which was a little more modern than the end result, but the local council wanted a more traditional construction. We had a heritage expert come and look at the house and give their recommendations,” he said. “She determined that it was probably part of a group of three or four houses that were once the same beautifully detailed Federation-era homes. But somebody had come along in the 1940s and did their own thing.”
“There was a discussion about pulling off the roof and getting it back to what it was, but it came down to a question of budget. We tried to put back as much as we could, by replacing the front windows with traditional timber, we changed the front path and front fence just to give a little nod to what used to be, without stripping the render and reconstructing the whole roof.”
Now the street appeal of the home is a better fit with its Federation neighbours. The decision was then made to pull focus from the facade while investing attention, and funds, into the rear of the house.
“In keeping with what the Council was wanting, we used traditional materials and techniques in the construction of the back extension even though it does feel very modern,” Maharaj said.
As well as employing conventional methods for the external build of the large rear addition, a host of modern-day luxury finishes were used inside, where the interior design was overseen by owner Sarah Azzam.
High-traffic floors were finished with limestone tiles, Polytec joinery was used throughout, and internal walls feature a sleek white set render. Bathrooms feature Fibonacci Terrazzo tiles with underfloor heating.
A standout of the new look is the grand triangular gable crowning the rear indoor-to-outdoor living zone, a unique design feature in the neighbourhood of smaller sized blocks and heritage homes. The seamless flow to the backyard is an element that has become a must-have in modern Sydney homes thanks to the temperate climate.
“Our work began with the deconstructing and restructuring of the original home. Retaining four good-sized bedrooms to the front of the house, the central areas were dedicated to service spaces, with a big family bathroom, laundry, powder room and en-suite. The home then steps down to a large open-plan kitchen, dining and living room, which seamlessly connects to an al fresco dining area, garden, and a new pool and cabana,” Maharaj added.
“It’s such a Sydney thing, the seamless flow to the outdoors from the main living area. When I think about our briefs, from every single client, I’d say right at the top of everyone’s list is natural light, good ventilation and a connection to the garden,” he said. “Australians also love a north orientation.”
The Azzams, who declined to comment on the project, bought the unrenovated Haberfield house in 2020 for A$2.5 million (US$1.6 million), then sold the reimagined residence in 2023 for A$4.9 million.
“They bought it as their forever home. That large space at the back was created that way because they’ve got a big extended family,” Maharaj said. “They were often talking about Christmas dinners of 20 to 30 people, and space for a grand dining table was specifically on their list of requirements. Sarah has a great design eye and was meticulously hand selecting the finishes. But they ended up seeing another house nearby and decided to do it all again.”
Maharaj shared some more thoughts about the design and build process.
The biggest surprise was… I think we got lucky with the glass gable in the back of the house. We tried to do something similar on a house only a couple of streets away about a year later and it was completely knocked back by Council. When we pushed back to ask why, we were told it should never have been approved as is. Sometimes the approval process includes a bit of luck.
A favourite material we discovered during the process was… Of all the materials, I’d have to say that the Super White Dolomite and the limestone flooring we used were the big hits. We had quite a few potential buyers asking about these items in particular. We have received a number of calls from other homeowners in the area who are looking for a similar renovation, and even the odd call from people who have seen the home and wanted to express how much they loved it.
The most dramatic change was… When we start these jobs, we can often see that the houses have been either abandoned or people have just added and removed rooms and walls over time. So bringing that all back together was really fulfilling for me as an architect. Originally, this house felt like a cold hospital ward when you walked through it, with all these rooms coming off one corridor. Bringing it back to life and making it feel like a home with a heart is something we’re really proud of.
The total cost of the renovation… Being able to do the building himself, and their own interior design meant the pair could save some money, but they really spared no expense. It was a project that cost approximately A$1.5 million.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.