3 min read
“In those blinds, you can find the microcosm of my whole career,” says Toronto-based designer Colette van den Thillart, referring to the shades covering her living room windows. “The fabric has such a place in my heart.” Called Shutter Stripe, the linen-cotton fabric was originally designed by iconic English decorator John Fowler (who named it Venetian Blind) and is now part of a textiles line she produces with London interior designer Nicky Haslam.
Max Kim-Bee
Toronto-based designer Colette van den Thillart in her bedroom.
Van den Thillart met Haslam, whom she calls her “best friend,” when her husband’s business took the couple to London, where she pursued a graduate degree in French and English decorative arts. While researching a paper on Fowler, she reached out to Haslam, who owns Fowler’s former hunting lodge. “We met, and it was just kismet,” she says.
Before long, the two were working together. Even though van den Thillart and her family, which includes two teenage daughters, have recently moved back to her hometown of Toronto, she and Haslam still collaborate on projects. Her own home, a 1920s center-hall neo-Georgian in the Rosedale enclave of the city, is chock-full of evidence of the time van den Thillart spent on the other side of the pond.
Max Kim-BeeThe dining room evokes the feeling of a garden grotto. Van den Thillart designed the plaster wall piece, which reads “Wilder Shores of Love.” The vintage Sirmos chandelier is from AWK Design Antiques; wallcovering, Grotto velvet by Nicky Haslam for Turnell & Gigon.
In the dining room, for example, the walls are covered in Grotto, a velvet printed with a digital image of a wall she and Haslam installed in a house in the English countryside. “We did a feature wall in flint, fossils, and semiprecious stones, like a real grotto,” she says. “This fabric is a mash-up of a complicated 18th-century idea and modern technology. You get something completely contemporary.”
Max Kim-BeeA contemporary painting by James Lahey, from Galerie de Bellefeuille, provides a rush of color in the Toronto living room of Colette van den Thillart. She designed the geometric objects atop the terrazzo garden tables from The Conran Shop.
Van den Thillart says she also has “England to thank” for her fearlessness when it comes to her sense of scale, especially when applied to lamps. “Small lamps look anxious to me,” she observes, “whereas bold-scale items project confidence.” In the living room, the oversize glass lamps on a pair of consoles flank a settee, above which hangs a piece of plaster art made by the designer. “When I need something with personality, I sometimes just make it myself,” she says.
Though van den Thillart honors requests from clients for “Zen-like” monochromatic primary bedrooms, in her own lair, she opts for color and exuberance. “My idea of a retreat is something that picks me up,” she says. “What feeds my soul is pattern and whimsy.”
Max Kim-BeeThe primary bedroom’s custom headboard is in a silk velvet; lamps from OKA have custom shades in Rose Cumming’s Delphinium fabric.
The room’s curvy headboard is covered in silk velvet, the designer’s favorite. “I’m a complete velvet addict,” she says. “I put it on as many things as possible.” The urn-topped plinth in the living room is draped in blue velvet, but even pieces that undergo more wear and tear get the sumptuous treatment. The sitting room’s serpentine sofa is upholstered in a rich mink-colored chenille, while the silk-velvet Turkish-style floor cushions and faux-fur rug in the living room are further examples of what van den Thillart calls the “plush warmth” that marks her eclectic, layered approach.
“We’re in a cold climate,” she observes of her Canadian surrounds. “I wanted to create rooms that are comfortable and cozy.”
Sitting Room
Max Kim-Bee
Purple accents add richness to rooms in warm neutrals. In the sitting room off the garden, the Hans Wegner wing chair is from Carl Hansen; the sofa in a Lee Jofa velvet and the Y&Co. rug are both custom.
Living Room
Max Kim-Bee
“I worked a lot of sexy curves into the living room,” says van den Thillart. A 19th-century Italian chair is in a Marvic Textiles crewel; the Italian glass lamps are custom.
Garden
Max Kim-Bee
The garden is a welcome respite on warm days.
Become a VERANDA Design Society Member
Become a VERANDA Design Society MemberCredit: Max Kim-Bee
Featured in our March/April 2018 issue. Interior design by Colette van den Thillart; Photography by Max Kim-Bee; Produced by Carolyn Englefield; Written by Julia Reed