Alex Papachristidis has a saying about life that is very apposite for an interior designer: You’re always walking into a dark room looking for the light switch.
Once you’ve turned on the light switch in one of his rooms, there’s plenty to delight the eye. ‘I’m a more is more kind of guy. I love food, I love travel, I love luxury. I have twenty-five best friends. More is always merrier for me.’ He doesn’t take himself seriously and really does have a wonderfully generous spirit—and it shows in his home and in his manners. When, at the last minute, JH was unable to make it to photograph, he was gracious and unruffled, fed us delicious sandwiches and … as you can see from our first question, did something so unashamedly ‘decorator’ that we had to ask him about it straight away:
So we both love the fact that you didn’t want Sian’s ugly cardboard coffee cup to be, er, there, and you decanted the coffee into a pretty mug…
Well, look, you know. I’m from that school that everything should be used. You know we use all our good silver, we use all our good dishes …
Ah, but this was something more than that – it was that you did not like the ugliness of it.
I don’t like plastic. I don’t like paper. I don’t like artificial. I always say to my housekeeper if we have containers in the house, I don’t want price tags on them. I don’t want to open the refrigerator and see a price tag on a bottle of ketchup. I don’t like to see unattractive things. I looked everywhere for the right sugar bowl.
