An Edwardian home near Rochester Old Town

Have you ever found yourself wondering about a dealer’s home while browsing their stock at a fair, in their shop or online?

It’s tempting to assume that years of collecting must have resulted in the kind of outstanding final edit to which we all aspire – a house not only filled with fabulous furniture and features, but one that is also brimming with clever decorating ideas and styling tips.

And looking around dealer and collector Rune Wold’s home, this feels like a fair assumption. However, Rune would likely disagree. According to him, there’s no such thing as a final edit.

‘Many dealers live with their best buys for a while, until something even better turns up and then they make their way onto the shop floor and eventually into someone else’s home,’ he says.

‘I live in an ever-changing panorama where the basic style remains the same, but the smaller elements change constantly.’

He believes that, deep down, many dealers are buyers rather than sellers at heart, admitting that when he wanders around a French market he tends to buy what he loves, very rarely thinking about whether or not it will sell.

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With an eclectic career spanning finance and translation work (from his native Norwegian into English), Rune’s transition from enthusiastic collector to professional antiques dealer – via his Instagram page – has been gradual.

He has a popular stall at Faversham Antiques & Vintage Market in Kent: a spectacular venue that attracts customers on the first Sunday of each month, where he and husband Hendrik Heyns lay out his wares in eye-catching style.

His stock ranges from French industrial clothing and rustic pottery, to Japanese textiles, mid-century furniture and Scandinavian art.

The couple’s home is a classic Edwardian three-storey terraced house near Rochester Old Town, and is decorated with the same panache as their market stall; an aesthetic that has its roots in their Scandinavian and South African backgrounds. But Hendrik is an architect with minimalist instincts, while Rune tends towards a more maximalist style.

‘Initially we had totally different ideas,’ says Rune, explaining that they compromised by making the kitchen and bathroom as simple as possible, in contrast to the comfortable living rooms and bedrooms.

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‘We now seem to be 99 per cent on the same page,’ he says. ‘Our tastes have developed along parallel lines – so much so that, when we walk the French markets in different directions, we rarely end up buying anything the other doesn’t love.’

Their house is simply decorated in classic shades of grey throughout, and bursts of burnt orange, red and ochre lift each room.

This neutral backdrop shows off their possessions beautifully: the painted bannisters on the landings make useful display rails for vintage fabrics, while the landing walls set off simply framed graphic prints and a striking black-and-white destination blind from a London bus route.

Ancient maps and foxed mirrors, vintage posters and faded paintings take pride of place above beds and fireplaces, but it’s the multiples of objects that catch the eye.

Along the sitting room mantelpiece range a collection of French rubber glove moulds, each one slightly different, and the sideboard in the master bedroom is covered with Chinese ginger jars. ‘I’m obsessed with them,’ Rune says. ‘They all vary, so my collection will never be complete.’

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This may all sound rather spartan, but the areas that need to be comfortable, such as the sitting room and bedrooms, are decked with layers of cushions, quilts, woolly blankets and counterpanes; some floral, others striped, all helping to soften and invite.

They spring from a seemingly bottomless supply, housed in cupboards and in teetering piles all over the house. A love of fabrics is something else the couple shares.

Rune collects from French markets and buys pre-war linens and ticking, while Hendrik knits complicated Fair Isle sweaters and makes garments in the attic workroom, devising his own patterns, often using vintage fabrics.

Another conciliatory element between their two styles is the lighting. They both think the quality of the light in a room is as important as the actual design of the light fitting, so they chose the PH5 pendant lamp designed by Danish genius Poul Henningsen for every room and landing in the house.

Unimpressed by the quality of light shed by the new bulbs in the 1950s, Henningsen created a glare-free light as close to natural light as possible, illuminating not just the area beneath it, but the whole room as well. Of course, it had to look good too, and it is now a classic Scandinavian design.

There are still two rooms in the house that need their PH5 – the attic workroom and the kitchen. ‘But they will come,’ says Hendrik, confirming the myth of the final edit. ‘It’s good to still have things to look out for.’