Inspiration
From vision to reality with Salvesen Graham
Inside the design process of a fabulous Mayfair apartment
The co-founders of London-based interior design studio Salvesen Graham, Nicole Salvesen and Mary Graham are known for their distinctive use of pattern and colour, and for an aesthetic that combines antique and contemporary pieces to create timeless and unique interiors.
At Marlborough Tiles, we take great pride and satisfaction in collaborating with interior designers, and it's an honour to help bring their creative visions to life. Because we make all of our colour and glaze from scratch, hand paint unique designs, and work with different sizes, shapes and textures of tiles, we can create exactly what the designer envisions for a particular project, without compromise.
We have been fortunate to work with the team at Salvesen Graham on numerous exciting projects in recent years, and are very pleased to share with you one of the latest examples: the bathroom of a fabulous Mayfair apartment recently featured by House & Garden, which includes several tiles from our collections as well as some bespoke hand painted pieces, created especially for the project.
In today’s article, we sat down with Nicole and Mary to learn about the process of creating this beautiful scheme.
L-R: Nicole Salvesen and Mary Graham, and the bathroom of the fabulous Mayfair apartment designed by their team.
Thank you both so much for talking with us today! Perhaps you could begin by telling us a little about the property and your client.
Of course. The apartment is located in a 1930s residential block. The owners of the space predominantly live overseas but often travel to the UK and use this apartment as their base. They love London and previously owned another apartment in the building, with an opportunity to purchase the penthouse above. This enabled them to create a roof terrace which has breath taking views across Hyde Park and the London skyline.
Tell us, what was the bathroom like before?
The bathroom that was here before had an odd level change involving the need for a step. We gave it a complete rethink, changing the footprint of the entire area and creating additional storage space for the apartment.
How did you go about creating the overall look for the space? Were there any key pieces or challenges that helped you make decisions?
The bathroom is used for the neighbouring bedroom, whilst also doubling up as a guest WC for visitors. We had selected a beautiful Antoinette Poisson fabric wall covering for the bedroom, and wanted to link the two spaces by bringing that through to the bathroom as well. Alongside the wall covering in the bathroom, we used half height wood paneling. We were keen that the shower area should speak to both of these elements.
Seasons medium bricks in Heather Bank and Savernake square tiles in Silverless Street were used in the shower to complement the wall coverings, along with half round trim pieces and bespoke hand painted zig zag border tiles.
And how did you select the tiles?
The shower area itself is quite large, so to break up the area, add visual interest, and create cohesion with the rest of the space, we envisioned the use of a half-height dado with tiles above and below in the same soft tone but different shapes and colours.
We fell in love with the idea of incorporating a contrasting hand-painted zig zag pattern for the dado, based on a shape borrowed from the wallpaper, which we knew the artists at Marlborough Tiles would create perfectly.
We chose to use Heather Bank brick tiles above the dado, complemented by Silverless Street square tiles below it, and selected some half round trim pieces to add definition to the border and around the shower niche, choosing the colours to complement the wall fabric.
Having worked with Marlborough Tiles before on many projects, we were confident that they would deliver on quality and would be able to work within our timeframe.
Thank you – we loved working with you on the project, and the finished space is simply stunning. Which other artisans did you work with to create this look?
The taps and shower came from Waterworks, the wall lights were from Collier Webb and again, the wall fabrics are from Antoinette Poisson.
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A big thank you to Nicole, Mary, the team at Salvesen Graham. You can find out more about the project and see some other beautiful images of the space in this article from House & Garden.
If you would like to commission our artists to create bespoke hand painted tiles for your project, please get in touch.
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