Celebrating Everyday Life
Emma Sims-Hilditch declares right away in this (second) book about her interior designs something so refreshing and affirming about the discipline in which she has become a star. Of herself and her team, as they work from their Cotswolds and London offices: “Our design philosophy has remained the same; it has always been built on the principle that every house needs to work on a functional level before you even consider the furniture, fabrics, and paint colours.” There it is, her ethos about how to begin a design project, and, thus, how to see it through. Many of Sims-Hilditch’s projects are about how to restore, reconfigure, and make relevant for life today centuries-old buildings, as well as new ones that need to honor their historic locales. Here, we see her ability to transform dwellings as disparate as a Victorian London townhouse; a 17th-century manor house with a barn transformed into a family party space; an 11th-century Jacobean manor house, portions of which include the remains of a monastery; and an apartment in London’s Old War Office building. Giles Kime tells succinct stories about each of the featured projects, followed by photos with descriptive captions that relate the key details to which Sims-Hilditch has attended. Kime emphasizes that Sims-Hilditch embodies that “new generation” of designers able “to reinvent historic houses in a manner that is not just considerate of the past but also relevant to how we live in the twenty-first century.” —David Masello