Interior designer Joyce Sitterly is reminiscing about her former flat in Camden. ‘It felt like New York to me,’ she remembers. ‘The moment we moved in, it was home.’ Recently married to production designer Arthur de Borman, Joyce had emigrated from her beloved Manhattan to London for love. Initially, she settled in Arthur’s east London bachelor pad, but she soon decided if she had to live in the cold, damp capital, she wanted to do it properly. That meant a Georgian house straight out of a Richard Curtis film, which this flat in a former pipe factory, with its concrete ceilings and Crittall windows, most certainly was not. Yet, somehow, its bones felt right. And so they started renting it during that first winter of Covid.
In the library, music room and dining space, the ‘Legs 11’ chair, which can be made to order from Arthur, contrasts with a mahogany table from Criterion Auctioneers.
Michael Sinclair
Joyce’s possessions were shipped from New York and the newlyweds set about making it their home. ‘Between Arthur and me, we have so, so much stuff,’ Joyce admits cheerfully. Anyone who has ever moved in with a partner will understand the delicate diplomacy required to stitch the contents of two lives into one coherent whole. All the more so when both parties are design-minded with strong opinions and 20 years of collecting behind them.
‘Arthur will not spare an item,’ Joyce jokes. ‘He’s a total magpie. If it was up to him, every single item that he has ever bought would be in the place. Things have to be very particularly arranged.’ Arthur will send her images of objects he is sourcing for work and about one in 20 gets the seal of approval. They applied the same process when it came to decorating their home and they have a storage unit crammed to the rafters to prove it.
Slowly, they added, edited, rotated and adjusted pieces in the space, removing those that didn’t make the cut. After about a year of tinkering, they were content. The end result was a visual representation of their individual tastes, butting against and riffing off each other. Arthur is drawn to gilding, florals and a certain English eccentricity. ‘Not chintzy – it’s a little bit Liberace and intentionally gauche,’ says Joyce, who loves Chinese furniture, plasterwork and animal prints. ‘I lean towards a more masculine feel.’