What Makes a Home One’s Own according to Anna Spiro?
No one does colour or pattern quite like interior decorator Anna Spiro. Globally loved for her unique ability to bring together interesting fabrics, antique furniture and art, she has built a tremendous career over the past twenty years.
Photography: Tim Salisbury
In her new book A Life in Pattern, Anna offers up a lifetime of hard-earned wisdom, showing how the very best interiors come from following your own path. In this extract, she answers the question: what makes a home one’s own?
This is one of those questions that I come back to time and again. Home should be a place of normality and familiarity, of comfort; a place that wraps you up and makes you feel safe, warm and happy. Home is where you can create your own world – and what makes my home mine is completely different to what makes your home yours.
So, how do we create a place that we truly adore and cherish? The things we love, collect and arrange within our home make it feel like ‘us’. Without them, a home can feel empty and soulless. I have been creating a home that I love ever since I left my family home in my early twenties. Yes, I have lived in a number of houses since then, but much of the furniture, art and other bits and pieces that I have collected have stayed with me. These elements have travelled with me on my journey and I have reworked them into my various houses. They are kind of like old friends; a new house feels more like a home the moment I put my old friends inside it.
Photography: Tim Salisbury
I have worked with a number of clients who have entered the later stages of their lives – their children have left home and they are at the point of downsizing from a large family home to an apartment or townhouse. One of the most common things I notice when such clients come to me is that they are not ready to let go of their things – objects that they have loved, that have been familiar to them for their entire lives in some cases. Often, a couple’s children will push for them to move the old furniture on and start from scratch, but I almost always advise the opposite. For one, I understand that getting rid of those treasured pieces can be like losing an arm or a leg. Moreover, by incorporating some of those special old items into the new home, while mixing in some fresh new pieces, we can create a sense of familiarity that makes transitioning to a brand-new place that bit easier.
