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<\/p>\nIt 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\u2019 director Louise Richards ushered in a textile-led renovation, which started in a once underused sitting room that doubles as Kristin\u2019s editing suite. Here, the sash windows have been dressed in blousy folds of Bennison\u2019s \u2018Daisy\u2019 linen, with domette interlining to ward off draughts (essential for Kristin as a Florida blow-in).<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s Indian River. The romance she has brought to the rooms of the vicarage also reflects her diverse creative lives.<\/p>\n
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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 \u2013 an idea she saw in the historic houses of Charleston and Savannah that keeps soot out of the room in summer.<\/p>\n
Kristin Perers<\/p>\n
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. \u2018I work in a fluid way,\u2019 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. \u2018The rhythm of painting is very much a part of my process,\u2019 she explains. Perfection is not the goal, but rather the capturing of fleeting moments of natural beauty.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019 finely rendered, Regency-style ditsy floral \u2018Petites Fleurs\u2019 linen, each panel tailored with the precision of couture and secured with ribbons reminiscent of corsetry.<\/p>\n
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More paper plates from the Met hang over a sofa covered in Bennison’s \u2018Hollyhock\u2019, on which reposes the couple’s dog Bluebell.<\/p>\n
Kristin Perers<\/p>\n
The room is composed of Kristin\u2019s most treasured objects: folk art from her childhood home, a pair of Staffordshire figurines, and framed patchwork art \u2013 a nod to Gloria Vanderbilt\u2019s patchwork-filled rooms of the 1970s. Kristin likens the house itself to a patchwork quilt \u2013 one that lovingly threads together a lifetime of experiences, with its people, places and things.<\/p>\n
In summer, she paints on the rooftop outside her studio, occasionally ascending the nearby ladder to the interconnected church\u2019s 16th-century bell tower, an act that evokes memories of childhood tree forts. \u2018This is a storybook house,\u2019 she says. \u2018It\u2019s my perch \u2013 and I have a whole playground.\u2019<\/p>\n