{"id":120920,"date":"2025-09-07T14:25:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T14:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120920\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T14:25:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T14:25:18","slug":"lessons-in-design-at-an-old-victor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/120920\/","title":{"rendered":"lessons in design at an old Victor…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photographs\u00a0Ingrid Rasmussen<\/p>\n

I press the buzzer of sculptor Lucille Lewin\u2019s Marylebone home, a former early Victorian primary school on Chiltern Street, look through the railings of the cast-iron gate, and the second one beyond it, and imagine them being opened by tiny, terrorised children itching to charge down the stone path. I glimpse some greenery but, otherwise, there is no sign of life. I\u00a0check the time, wonder whether to call, press the buzzer again. A figure emerges, a\u00a0white Panama hat in hand. It is Richard Lewin, Lucille\u2019s husband. \u201cWe were expecting you at 12,\u201d he apologises as\u00a0he opens the first gate.<\/p>\n

I offer to come back later. No need, he says, leading me into what used to be the playground, or at least half of it, into a courtyard of curated ferns, trees and climbers, some thigh-high, others reaching towards the second and third storeys of this 18th-century building. The Panama hat suddenly seems quite at home.<\/p>\n

I follow him into the ground-floor living space. It is a single, enormous room, separated from the garden courtyard by glass that sits against the courtyard\u2019s original columns. The playground extended beyond them to the wall, once painted a dour brown. Lucille and Richard, both originally from Johannesburg, are drawn to volume, scale and, most of all, light, so they requisitioned the space with its 13m-high ceilings, extended the windows and transformed it into a\u00a0cathedral of white and warm neutrals, untreated wood, metal and stone.<\/p>\n

\"Visions <\/p>\n

Visions in white: the desk where Lewin sketches out her sculptures, and Richard\u2019s room beyond<\/p>\n

\u201cLucille might still be in the bath,\u201d Richard says, and he goes off to the kitchen zone, a study in white (carrara work surface, industrial open shelves holding white crockery, rows of antique glassware), to make tea.<\/p>\n

I listen to the stillness, feel the movement in the sculptural pieces in white porcelain that Lucille has been creating for the past decade. They are positioned on every surface \u2013 on the white, painted brick walls, on the wooden side table, the shelves that stretch the length of the back wall, beside the two outsize lichen-coloured sofas that bring the natural world inside. Plants do the same and there are accents of green everywhere \u2013 in a\u00a0pair of plastic shell chairs by Philippe Starck for Kartell, in the embroidered Victorian chair that belonged to her grandmother, in the pair of Chesterfield ottomans, art books lined up on top of them, and in the second, much smaller courtyard at the kitchen end of the room.<\/p>\n

\"Cooking <\/p>\n

Cooking up a storm: marble tops and industrial beams in the kitchen area<\/p>\n

I spot two imposters in the room\u2019s artful mix \u2013 a\u00a0football and, on the floor beside the fireplace, a\u00a0huge flatscreen TV \u2013 when Lucille appears. She does so as if by magic for there is no hint of a staircase. She is an edit in grey: loose, calf-length trousers, camisole and cardigan offset by midnight-blue Birkenstocks. Restraint is her watchword: in her clothes, her person, what she has brought to her design and retail career. She and Richard founded the womenswear brand Whistles in 1976; they sold it to Karen Millen for \u00a36m in 2002 and in 2007 Lucille spent a year as creative director of Liberty.<\/p>\n

Richard slips away. There are tasks to be done; the pair are leaving for Croatia the next day and, says Lucille, \u201cI\u2019ve got a man coming with trousers for me at 11.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the meantime, she introduces me to her work, sotto voce, as a hostess might when introducing significant guests at a party. She returned to the art studies she abandoned before moving, at 21, to America with Richard, who was studying at Harvard Business School. She studied at City Lit and then, in 2017, she graduated with an MA in glass and ceramics from the Royal College of Art. Today, she works with spiralled tubes of white porcelain, gold leaf, glass and electro-formed copper. Her wall and table-based pieces are tangled, tactile, chthonic.<\/p>\n

\"And <\/p>\n

And so to bed: one of the bedrooms with exposed brick walls and large window on to the garden<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collision between humanity and nature,\u201d is the recurring theme, she tells me cheerily. Informed by AI and climate change, dreams, memories and fears, these abstract pieces gesture to \u201chow the world will regenerate after we\u2019ve blown ourselves up. The themes are dark and political, but the pieces are done with hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

We sit down at the kitchen table from Christie\u2019s, a\u00a0table so long it would make monks at a refectory table feel short-changed, and she tells me the story of their home. They bought the building in 1983. \u201cNobody wanted these kinds of spaces back then. Warehouses were for artists in Manhattan.\u201d For 20 years, they used it as a fashion design studio, offices and showroom. They then worked with London-based architect Seth Stein, who also built their home of sandstone and steel in Plettenberg Bay on South Africa\u2019s Garden Route. \u201cIt\u2019s a\u00a0glorious landscape, very wild. I was born on the sea and my work has a lot of elements of the sea in it. I love sun and I love air, I love love love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is in the middle of telling me how they brought all their outsized, custom-made furniture over from their 11-bedroom Georgian townhouse in Bryanston Square, north of Marble Arch, when the buzzer rings.<\/p>\n

\"Deep <\/p>\n

Deep soak: Lucille\u2019s bathroom with exposed brick walls and giant tub<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Ian,\u201d she says, and she comes back with Ian Batten, a clothesmaker, and Rie Taniguchi, a Japanese-born jeweller. \u201cThe last time you were here I got you to take your trousers off,\u201d she says to Ian. \u201cAnd I took my trousers off and we were both standing in our knickers.\u201d She tried on Ian\u2019s trousers and ordered a pair. Now here they are, in black. \u201cWhat makes them so perfect?\u201d I ask. \u201cIt\u2019s because they peg,\u201d Lucille says, \u201cand because they\u2019ve got enough room to move.\u201d She does a couple of squats in front of the sink. \u201cAnd they look like boys\u2019 clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n

They leave and she calls out to Richard. \u201cWe\u2019re coming up,\u201d she says. \u201cAre you very decent?\u201d She shows me her bedroom of exposed brick, with antique African blanket and reclaimed wooden floors, and her immaculate bathroom with giant tub. \u201cIt\u2019s horribly messy,\u201d she says. A black and white tub sits alone at one end, a wooden bath rack across it, candles in position.I\u00a0have a bath every day. So wasteful.\u201d And yet.<\/p>\n

If the grandchildren\u2019s bedroom is a colour-burst of toys and dressing-up props, Richard\u2019s room is a mise en sc\u00e8ne of antiques, bed and a vintage metal work bench. \u201cAnd look at this!\u201d she says, darting behind a fake wall. \u201cThis is very clever. It\u2019s all Richard\u2019s clothes. Isn\u2019t it brilliant?\u201d she says of the walk-in wardrobe. \u201cAnd then, look, the stunning bathroom.\u201d She\u2019s already inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a spa,\u201d I say, melting at all the marble. And then, voices off, I hear, \u201cIt\u2019s a steam room!\u201d Richard comes and joins us and we stand together, fully clothed, all three of us admiring the wonder of it.<\/p>\n

Lucille Lewin\u2019s work is part of Second Lives, a group exhibition at Different London, 14 Percy Street, Fitzrovia, W1T 1DR, 19-24 November (secondlivesart.com) Follow her on @lucillelewin or see lucillelewin.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographs\u00a0Ingrid Rasmussen I press the buzzer of sculptor Lucille Lewin\u2019s Marylebone home, a former early Victorian primary school…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-120920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}