It was only recently, 15 years into their tenure as custodians of the house, that Kristin and William have started to crave more permanence. And so began a year of magical stitching, during which Kristin pieced together the rooms anew. An inspiring visit from Bennison Fabrics’ director Louise Richards ushered in a textile-led renovation, which started in a once underused sitting room that doubles as Kristin’s editing suite. Here, the sash windows have been dressed in blousy folds of Bennison’s ‘Daisy’ linen, with domette interlining to ward off draughts (essential for Kristin as a Florida blow-in).
A large George Smith sofa is draped in a vintage Rio Grande wool rug in soft pinks, picked up by Kristin in New Mexico, and piled with striped bolster cushions, including some featuring the late Geoffrey Bennison’s signature square ends. This embrace of patterned textiles is nostalgic for Kristin, who grew up in a bohemian ranch-style home built by her parents on Florida’s Indian River. The romance she has brought to the rooms of the vicarage also reflects her diverse creative lives.
Paper plates from The Met museum in New York are displayed above a Shaker-style cupboard. Kristin made the fan in the fireplace out of folded watercolour paper – an idea she saw in the historic houses of Charleston and Savannah that keeps soot out of the room in summer.
Kristin Perers
After working as a designer at Calvin Klein in New York, she relocated to London in the late 1980s, wrote book about seasonal home decoration and then gradually pivoted to interior styling and image making. ‘I work in a fluid way,’ she says, gesturing to a mannequin draped with a painterly botanical canvas that she left out in the rain, strewn with roses, which she then depicted with her brush where they lay. ‘The rhythm of painting is very much a part of my process,’ she explains. Perfection is not the goal, but rather the capturing of fleeting moments of natural beauty.
Kristin traces her love of making back to her mother, who trained as an actor and later channelled her creative energies into their home, once lovingly constructing a doll’s house for her two daughters. In the main bedroom, Kristin had a curved canopy added to an Ikea four-poster, fashioned from wrought iron by a local craftsman in an arched shape particular to the period of the house. It is smartly fitted with Bennison Fabrics’ finely rendered, Regency-style ditsy floral ‘Petites Fleurs’ linen, each panel tailored with the precision of couture and secured with ribbons reminiscent of corsetry.
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More paper plates from the Met hang over a sofa covered in Bennison’s ‘Hollyhock’, on which reposes the couple’s dog Bluebell.
Kristin Perers
The room is composed of Kristin’s most treasured objects: folk art from her childhood home, a pair of Staffordshire figurines, and framed patchwork art – a nod to Gloria Vanderbilt’s patchwork-filled rooms of the 1970s. Kristin likens the house itself to a patchwork quilt – one that lovingly threads together a lifetime of experiences, with its people, places and things.
In summer, she paints on the rooftop outside her studio, occasionally ascending the nearby ladder to the interconnected church’s 16th-century bell tower, an act that evokes memories of childhood tree forts. ‘This is a storybook house,’ she says. ‘It’s my perch – and I have a whole playground.’