Every picture, vintage chandelier and rustic confit pot tells a story in the elegant London home of Amanda Grant and her husband Kristian Dean. The inspiration for its eclectic European style can be traced back to Amanda’s teenage years spent in Italy, and more than a decade of living and working in France for Kristian.
This two-bedroom flat in a converted Georgian townhouse is the smallest home the couple has ever owned and they have used the space to distil their understanding of simple European style to its very essence, filling each room with an artful continental elegance. ‘We learnt to appreciate the French simplicity in interiors,’ Amanda explains.
Bare plaster walls and neutral paint shades were the perfect backdrop against which the couple could display their beautiful and meaningful things. ‘With an old building, if the structure and the bones are right, then anything will look stunning inside it,’ says Kristian.
The flat does have good proportions but was quite generic when they bought it. The walls were stark white, the floors had been replaced with new herringbone parquet and the original shutters were screwed into their box fittings. These elements were easily remedied, but there were other factors at play.
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Downsizing from a five-bedroom home in Lewes entailed a careful edit of their belongings, and making the flat work also required skilled space design. Kristian’s background in joinery and interior design proved invaluable, along with his experience of period property renovations in both London and France. The flat’s reworked layout works so well that its limited footprint is no longer the focus. Instead, it’s about the beautiful things inside it.
One of the biggest changes was the kitchen. Cooking is a major part of Amanda and Kristian’s lives – they run Cook School, a charitable organisation teaching children to cook, and often test recipes or film tutorials – so the original kitchen, tucked at the back of the flat, was far from ideal.
‘We moved it into the bright living space with its huge Georgian windows and high ceilings,’ says Amanda. ‘And instantly the flat felt more balanced.’ Once the kitchen was part of the main reception room, the next challenge was to incorporate its appliances and units without them dominating the space.
Kristian built two sets of cupboards to resemble a dresser: ‘We drew lots of sketches and it evolved gradually. Then we painted it brown for instant patina, like you’d get in an Italian kitchen.’ Fixing a fabric skirt across its lower shelves added softness. ‘We didn’t want it to be too feminine,’ says Amanda. ‘But a faded black and ecru stripe adds texture without being too bold.’
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The kitchen sink, hob and oven are set into a marble-topped cupboard; another of Kristian’s creations. He added a wall shelf above the splashback, which provides a delicate platform for artworks, Tuscan olive pots and old glassware. The vintage kitchenware gets regular use, either for cookery demonstrations or everyday meals.
These are treasured pieces, but neither Amanda nor Kristian are precious about them: ‘We share the same passion for understanding the history of an item,’ says Amanda. ‘We are both drawn to pieces that have aged naturally over the years and tell a story. They were always meant to be used and we like to continue that story.’
Alongside the everyday items are favourite decorative pieces that have moved with the couple from house to house and are almost part of the family. ‘The thing that instantly strikes most people about our kitchen is the wooden chandelier,’ says Amanda. ‘It came from a brocante on the Costa Brava and was the first thing Kristian and I bought together.’
In their previous home it was in the entrance hall, but in this Georgian room something was missing. ‘We decided it should have a bit of a makeover,’ she says. As such, she added gold silk lampshades to reflect the townhouse setting. It’s typical of the couple’s approach; they love to reuse pieces and give them a fresh look in a new place.
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As for every picture telling a story, the artworks around the flat all add their own footnotes to Kristian and Amanda’s London chapter. There’s the ornately framed tiny print in the main bedroom, depicting a mother and daughter with a mushroom basket in the Dordogne, where Kristian’s parents live.
Then there’s the painting they glimpsed on a brocante stall by the side of the road as they drove through a French village. ‘The seller told us he found it in a vide-grenier,’ says Amanda. ‘We bartered for it and piled it into the car.’ That floral still-life was worth the U-turn: the couple discovered that the 20th-century artist is relatively well known, and many works have done well at auction. It now hangs in their living room, and has turned that emergency stop into another tale in the rich tapestry of stories that are bound up in this elegant, deeply personal home.
Alongside Cook School (cookschool.club) the couple also collaborates on interiors projects (@cshome.cs)
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