The tenets of successful design have repeatedly been chronicled by the great and the good – but while such ingredients as proportion and function are fairly determinable, it’s not all as prescriptive. “Good rooms should always keep you a little surprised,” ordained David Hicks, while Nancy Lancaster famously declared that every room needs “something a little bit ugly.” Chloe Willis, Associate Director at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, agrees: “a bit of surprise, something jarring or magical can be delightful. Functionality is essential, but it does not delight or make you smile in the way that whimsy can,” she says - ‘whimsy’ being a catch-all that covers those other less precise edicts. Defined by the Cambridge dictionary as ‘something playful and amusing’ and ‘a sudden wish or desire that cannot be reasonably explained’, it’s a word that is increasingly being used in reference to our homes. There are over 60,000 uses of hashtag whimsicaldecor on Instagram, and “whimsy lifts an interior,” confirms Martin Brudnizki. The question is whether we’ve paid it sufficient attention? And, if not, how might we harness it, and harness it well?
For looking back, we could credit whimsy for aspects of several of this country’s great houses, gardens and rooms, and thus for expanding the boundaries of our aesthetic landscape. Whimsy is in the more ornate architectural styles, such as the Indo-Saracenic turquoise onion dome that tops the Mughal-inspired Sezincote House in Gloucestershire, and in the follies that adorn Arcadian parkland. It’s in the practice of shaping yew and box into birds and beasts, and in the exquisite Grinling Gibbons carved room at Petworth House in West Sussex. Each is an instance that provokes surprise and delight on first sight (and, indeed, second, third and fourth) that presumably arose from a sentiment of ‘why not?’ Conceivably, they were risks, at the time – “but risks taken are what have given us many of the design norms we take for granted today,” observes Brandon Schubert, asking, “had anyone ever seen mirrored furniture before the first designer thought it was a good idea to try it?”
As for more recent examples, there is whimsy in the chintz wrapped pillars in Flora Fraser’s London drawing room; “the idea sprang forth like a waterfall,” says Nicky Haslam, who decorated the house with Studio QD. There is whimsy is Buchanan Studio’s collaboration with Charlotte and Philip Colbert for the pop art-meets-surrealism Maison Colbert. And there is whimsy in Martin Brudnizki’s designs for Annabel’s club in Berkeley Square, where “the ground floor is an English garden, the first floor an exotic garden – and in the basement there’s a gorilla wearing a crown,” as he describes. Pulling further details, we could mention the intricate floral plasterwork, the carpet of flowers on the ceiling in the loo, swan taps, and a stairwell containing a hot-air balloon from which is suspended a carousel unicorn.
In this is a lesson: “I approach interior design as a narrative, a story – and whimsy belongs to that story,” says Martin. He points out that the gorilla fits in the nightclub because of the jungle association (cast your mind back to the film, The Jungle Book, and the devious ‘king of the swingers’ – who, technically, was an orangutang, but it’s close enough.) And he explains that the rule was applied to those earlier instances, too. “The Grinling Gibbons carvings at Petworth House mirrored the formal gardens that used to be the view from the window,” he says. “Whimsy must make sense with the whole, otherwise it’s just frippery, or silliness. Unless that’s the approach you want to take, in which case that is the story.”
The next important point is that “whimsy can be dialled up and down,” says Martin, suggesting that Annabel’s would be too much for a private home – similarly, we don’t all live in a Palladian villa, surrounded by hundreds of acres, or desire a sitting room accessorised with marble lobster busts. Brandon, who likens a tendency to whimsy to a personality trait, confesses to having talked clients out of “whimsical ideas that I know they’ll regret after a few months of living with them.” Because in his opinion, whimsy mustn’t come at the sacrifice of function, and “of using the space normally.” Notable is that carved walls and swan-shaped taps still adhere to their primary use, as does mirrored furniture, a womb-shaped headboard, and chintz-wrapped columns. Likewise, “a mirrored ceiling, or an over-the-top colour scheme in a small room,” says Brandon, of his own schemes. For more, we might look at Rachel Chudley, and the turrets and finials that she added to kitchen cabinetry; in the same house she’s installed a sculptural chandelier that resembles a flock of scaled down gold lilypads, floating in the ether. Then there’s Beata Heuman, a firm believer in interiors being ‘exciting’ – she gave a client a bright pink floor, and has embroidered eyelashes onto the arm of a sofa.
Tricky, for those of us who don’t feel that we’re blessed with incomparable originality, is the conception of whimsy. Charlotte Buchanan describes the Buchanan Studio process as “drawing on Angus’s background in set design; every project begins with the aim of evoking something before grappling with the practical details,” because “imagination works best when liberated from the constraints of practicality – though the practical details often end up adding to and enhancing the design.” She also mentions collaboration as “key in opening up new channels of whimsy.”
At the same time, and as proven by some of the examples above, whimsy doesn’t have to be brand new (“though it does have to be unexpected, which means it has to be somewhat novel,” says Brandon.) Borrowing from the greats is acceptable: Lulu Guinness’s folly, designed by Rollo Dunford, is a nod to the creative fancy of Clough Wiliams-Ellis of Portmerion, Rachel Chudley recently designed a pair of internal stained glass pocket doors based on a Mondrian painting, and Chloe posits trompe l’oeil as having eternal whimsical merit. Martin suggests that whimsy can be achieved simply by doing something unexpected, “throw a rug over the ottoman, use an unusual trim on a lampshade, get cushions made up in an extraordinary chintz, put something where it shouldn’t be.” Equally, you can go bolder; it’s about “taking a chance,” says Brandon, explaining that “experimenting is part of growing as a designer” – even if you’re more enthusiast than professional. It might be a risk but the results can be triumphant.
