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- [00:02]
Caroline
Welcome to How To Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks and tales from interior designers, stylists and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us@podcastallardesigns.net now, on with the show. We're back for part two of my conversation with Ben Pintereth. Liz was under the weather and Taryn was in France, so it's just me and Ben, but we had a great conversation about his book and English vision. And if you haven't listened to part one, go do that and then come back here and listen to part two, which we'll get to right now. How interesting to have truly both sides of the scale. You've got, you know, a part of your business doing the interior architecture and you're planning everything from moldings and tile work and layouts, but then all the way up to lampshades, everything, you know?
- [01:11]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, it's a bit crazy. It goes back to maybe what I was first talking about when we were chatting. I'm really conscious that your blog is called. Your podcast is called how to Decorate. We'll get there, we'll get there, we'll get there, people. Sorry, making you wait. In part two, we'll do how to Decorate. So I've. Yeah, I've got this crazy brain. It bubbles around. I'm interested in everything. It's really hard to sort of say, I'm just going to focus on this and not that, obviously, there's a danger in all of these things that you become jack of all trades, master of none, but. And that is a danger, actually. And then we have to work really, really hard, make sure that as well as having breadth in our design studio and a huge breadth of interest and areas that we're engaged in, then you have to dig really deep and you have to have the depth as well. And that's to do with having a fantastic group of people who have worked, some of whom have worked with me for many years now, some are still fairly new. And we. We love to have people who stay in our office for a long time. And, you know, at some stage, I'm going to leave. And I suddenly realized a few years ago, like, wow, okay, when I, when it's time for me to leave, actually there's an amazing group of people here and it's not all just going to fizzle out when I'm out of here. Which is quite an exciting thought and.
- [02:38]
Caroline
Cool that you made your, your. Did you not make your firm employee owned?
- [02:43]
Ben Pentreath
Yes, yes. A couple of years ago now. Three years ago we did that. And that was me giving quite a lot of thought as to what is the best way to create a studio that has real longevity for the long term. And also knowing, which is a little strange, but knowing that I didn't want to carry on working at the pace necessarily that I do at the moment for the rest of my life. An awful lot of architects and designers have a bit of a tendency to think. Not only do they think they're complete genius, you know, I'm a genius, but they also think that the longer they live, the more genius they get and the more. And I actually have a theory that everyone in life has moments where it's great to be like really doing a lot. And then actually I'm really looking forward to slightly changing my pace a little bit. I've recently spent a tiny bit more time with the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and teaching and doing little bits of teaching at Cambridge University and stuff like that, which I've really enjoyed. And it's a whole different perspective and that's fun and it's totally different. And so, and I think, you know, you can't go on and on forever going, yeah, right, I'm doing this, that and the other. I've got to do everything. It's, it's good to have a change of pace. So the employee ownership is the first step that I've already made to kind of to get the practice on that journey so that when it's time for me to take a back seat, there's a really strong sense of ownership, corporate ownership within the firm. And it's not owned by just one shareholder or an outside body. It's. It's owned by everyone who works there.
- [04:33]
Caroline
Yeah, that's true.
- [04:33]
Ben Pentreath
While you work there, you get, you get, you know, if, if there are dividends to be had, it goes to everyone in the office, which is pretty cool. So it's a great system which was set up a few years ago in the UK and it's been, it's been very popular actually with design firms. It's not just me, so it's really good. And but so, yeah, so it is this question of having a broad sense on everything, but then getting digging deep. And. And so we've got people who just work on the master planning projects or just work on individual houses or architecture. And then we've got a fantastic team in the decoration who just work on the decoration of some of the houses. And obviously, if we're designing. If we're lucky enough to be designing a new house or major alterations to a house, the architectural hat, where we're also engaged to be the interior designer, interior decorator. That's really fun because it's different. It's different people in the office, different sides of the office working together on a unified team. And it's not to say, you know, we do decorate houses where we're not the architect and we work on lots of houses where we're the architect but not the decorator. But it's lovely when you get to do both.
- [05:41]
Caroline
Sure.
- [05:42]
Ben Pentreath
It's really fun.
- [05:43]
Caroline
Well, okay, let's talk. Let's change gears to the decoration a little bit. We are how to decorate, but we don't always get to talk about architecture on the podcast. So it is.
- [05:51]
Ben Pentreath
The fascinating thing is that I find that all the stuff we have just been talking about, it's amazing how interested people are in it. It's really fascinating. People really get it. They're really into it. It's really interesting. The town side of it is the thing that people just find the most fascinating.
- [06:10]
Caroline
Yeah. Well, I love. I absolutely loved that element of the book, and I would encourage everyone to read the book, you know, if you're. If you're interested in that at all. As far as the decoration. Gosh, I was so, so surprised and struck by the, like, the breadth of style, I suppose, you know, there's some very colorful spaces. I loved your flat in London. Yeah. All of the color and saturation of the patterns. And then there are some much more, you know, I suppose. Yes. Calm. I loved the. I believe it was the client who was Swedish, and she had that beautiful white kitchen that almost had an austerity.
- [06:55]
Ben Pentreath
To it, I suppose, and almost a modernist, abstracted space. Yeah. Although it's got classical moldings. Yes, absolutely.
- [07:02]
Caroline
So how do you. How do you dig into the project as far as the decor goes and, you know, approach it differently for each project?
- [07:12]
Ben Pentreath
Well, I think. Yeah, I talk about that a little bit in terms of. I mean, I'm always, you know, we all know decorators who do the most fantastic work where you can open a magazine or a book and you can see a single photograph and in one go you will be correct. You can name the decorator. And that might well be true of me as well. You know, full disclosure, like, I might be one of those people, but very often you can name the decorator because they sort of have a very individual style which they're going to impose is the wrong word. But they're going to place on any project, any building, any site. And obviously it will have local variations or historical variations or regional variations that obviously all great decorators and designers are responsive to the individual needs of the building or the client or the climate or whatever. It might be like somebody who might be one of these decorators designing a beach house in, in the Caribbean. It's not, it's not going to look the same as if it's a ski lodge in Aspen. Right, we get that. But there are still these things which are, you know, identifiable.
- [08:23]
Caroline
Yeah, they have a lens.
- [08:25]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, yeah, exactly. A lens is a very nice way of describing it. And I've. I mean, for myself, I change my mind on decoration the whole time anyway, just at home. I don't know if anyone else does, but like I'm. I quite like changing things out. Like, one minute you might want your kitchen one color and the next minute you might want it another color. And that's fine. It's. It's paint. It's pretty easy. It's sort of like it's a great way of changing up life and keeping it fresh. I think one of the things I talk about in the book is slightly to do with the sort of philosophy, velocity, the speed of. The speed of, you know, the rhythms of time. You might want to call it where, if we're doing the architecture or the urbanism in particular, like, if you design a street and you get it in the right place, leading from somewhere to somewhere, you kind of have a hunch that that street might be there for thousands of years. Because there are many streets in London that are thousands of years old. Right. All of the buildings have come and gone. The street is now 6ft higher than it was when it was first laid out, but the street is in the same place. It's like a very profound long time period. Architecture obviously comes and goes. You know, there are buildings which are in England which are hundreds of years old. There aren't many buildings which are thousands of years old. And there are, you know, lots of buildings that are 30 years old that we all have a probably suspicion will be demolished within our lifetime, which is also really horrific when you're Thinking about sustainability, but that's another subject. And then you have decoration, where actually, really sweetly, that flat you just mentioned, the one in Regent's park, my lovely client has now moved out to the country and she sold that apartment. And I can tell you that entire flat has been ripped to shreds by the new owners. It's life, it comes and goes. Many, many famous rooms by famous decorators, you know, we could think about.
- [10:23]
Caroline
Sure.
- [10:23]
Ben Pentreath
Billy Baldwin, or, gosh, Billy Baldwin, David Hicks, John Fowler, Sybil Colfax, you know, Siri Maugham, you know, famous. Like, if anybody reads the World of Interiors magazine, you know, fantastic. Mitch Owens, you know, every. Every month is kind of like showing us, you know, amazing books in history of rooms which are actually 20, 30, 40 years old. We don't mind that. That, for me, is not unsustainable. It's not unsustainable to say it's time to change the decoration. Because decoration, to assess, that is to do with, like, fashion.
- [10:56]
Caroline
Right.
- [10:57]
Ben Pentreath
And change and just refreshing your life. You're allowed to do that. It's always good to think about longevity. It's always good to think about the key, you know, structural pieces. Like, it really breaks my heart if I'm going into a house where somebody did, like, a really terrible kitchen design and kind of 10 years later, we're having to have a debate, is it time to take the kitchen out? Whereas you kind of like to think that if you can put some great cabinets in, there's just a chance that they might be able to last for a very long time. Sure. But so. And if you're buying furniture, you know, I say, you know, try and get a really great sofa because that's going to be with you for a long time and it's worth spending money on something that's constructed really beautifully and inside, or buying beautiful bits of antique furniture which are already 2 or 300 years old, maybe, and you're going to give them a little moment in your life, they're going to outlive you, you know.
- [11:50]
Caroline
Absolutely. And maybe. But maybe go to your, you know, your family members and.
- [11:54]
Ben Pentreath
Or they might go to your family. Yeah, yeah. And so. And, and so, you know, so that's great. But then. But then the decoration itself is as. It's mutable, it's changeable and that's fun. It's part of the fun thing of life. And so for me, there are all these different strands which come. There's this sort of. There's. There's this sort of Venn diagram of like, what's the building? There's obviously a bit of me, like, if I'm coming in and advising or guiding or helping people, you know, I guess. I guess they're coming because I'm going to give them a certain degree of influence and suggestions which they. Which, you know, are probably going to relate to things we've done before in some way, shape or form. And then most important in all of this by far is the person who's going to actually live there. And I tell a little story in the book about one of the houses and one of the beautiful houses in the book, which was one of my lifetime honors to work on a wonderful, really historic house in Dorset called Chettle. It's in the sort of country house chapter of the book where I look at a whole series of the big country houses that we've worked on over the last 15 years. And that one, you know, it was a fantastic decoration project. I was working with a friend of mine who was the restoration architect of the building and did up the kind of, you know, made the building. It was in a terrible condition. And he had a massive task just to kind of restore it and make it all perfect again. Not too perfect, just perfect enough. And then we were helping on colors, wallpapers, fabrics, you know, rugs, lamps, sofas, furniture, decoration. And we were doing some of the interior architectural decoration as well, so paneling, design. And we just detailed up the kitchens and the bathrooms and things like that and fed that into Hughes and my friend Hugh Pettor's overall work. And then. But that project, actually, weirdly, the house, when it first came on the market, it had been on the market for the first time in like 250 years. And there were a lot of people interested in buying it. And it got bought. It's a very special building. It got bought by this young couple who are absolutely great. They had a great sense of energy, they were really fun people and they knew a little bit about me. I didn't know them, but they knew about me. So they called me in and I went to go and see it. I was there like a flash. I knew that house. I've been there. I'd been there in sort of funny, you know, open days when they opened up the garden. And it's like the dream commission. I'm so excited. And we were getting going and then genuinely what happened was they got worried about how much having to restore the building was going to cost. And it was definitely more than they had initially thought. And he was kind of a young guy he was successful. He was in the. He was in the city. He had done very well. Uh, but he was young. He was in his twenties. Um, and, you know, he had done fairly well, but maybe not that well. And he's beginning to get a little bit nervous. And he actually. I wish that more people in life had this tendency to sort of say, I think I might have just made a mistake. Uh, very hard to admit mistakes, particularly if you're a city trader, trust me. And he called me up and he said, it's really sad, but I think we've decided to sell the house on. We're biting off more than we can comfortably chew. We're too young. Our kids are too young. I just. It's. It's. I could do it, but I don't want to do it. It's too much. Yeah. And I'm worried that I won't have the commitment to see it through. And it was a really powerful thing to admit. You know, for somebody young and ambitious, it was like, okay, I totally respect that. And luckily, we hadn't actually started too much work, because that's always the pain when you've done a lot of design work and then something doesn't happen.
- [15:38]
Caroline
Right.
- [15:38]
Ben Pentreath
And then, bizarrely, amazingly, twist of fate, I had brought in to meet them and to work with them, which was going really well, a landscape architect who's a really good friend of mine called Pip Morrison. We worked together a lot. I also worked together a lot with Pip's husband, Kim Wilkie, but never together. They always work.
- [15:59]
Caroline
How funny.
- [16:00]
Ben Pentreath
Although their husband and husband. But anyway, so Pip is great. So I brought Pip in. I knew he was perfect for the house. And he was also very sad when. When these guys sold. Sold the house on. But then Pip knew already the people who then bought the house from the people who had first bought the house. And then by this weird twist of life, I then got hired back in about six months later or something.
- [16:24]
Caroline
Amazing.
- [16:24]
Ben Pentreath
Our interior designer. So it was like, really, like, that does not happen very often in life. That particular little thing. If the first guys had proceeded and had just stuck to plan A and carried on, it would have looked really cool. It would have been great. The building would have been the same. It's still me, right? And it would have looked like one thing. And then the new people came, and they were a lot older. You know, they were sort of in their late 50s, early 60s. You know, their kids had grown up. They were still sort of living at home, but kind of left home. And they had a passion for antique furniture and history. And Tom was just desperate to restore this beautiful building that needed so much love pouring into it. And he was like, I'm just gonna. This is like. It was like a project for him. And it's the most amazing thing that he did. It's incredible, the restoration that they carried out. Very few people have got that sort of energy. And we decorated for them, and it's exactly the same house, and it's me and it's them, and it's completely, totally different. And what that proved to me is a little kind of experiment is that in the Venn diagram of the house and me and the owner, the really important person in the mix is the owner. It's not me, it's never me. And it's. And it's not. It is the house. Because the right house finds the right owner. And. And in a way, that's probably the simplest explanation I've got, is still kind of why there are so many different projects which look so different from one another. I think you can detect themes running through to do with authenticity of detail or love of. Love of mixing old and new furniture. Like, I love historical decoration, but actually, whereas in art historical buildings, historically inspired buildings, I'm really, really keen that my buildings are sort of totally authentic and feel and flavor and touch because of that whole thing I described about the velocity of decoration, I'm a little bit less worried about.
- [18:36]
Caroline
Right.
- [18:36]
Ben Pentreath
I don't think that you need to live just with, like, Georgian period wallpaper or Georgian furniture or lamps that look like Georgian oil lamps or, you know, you can really have fun and mix it up if you want. You don't have to. And some people love just that very historical language. They probably wouldn't actually engage me to be their decorator because I. I don't really do rooms that just look like that. Like, I do like to bring in flashes of color and unexpected moments or. Yeah, exactly. There's a dialogue about old and new that I find completely fascinating. I love being in historical country houses. For instance, Chatsworth is an amazing example where the Dukes of Devonshire, over many years now, have made, like, they've got this incredible collection, historical collection. I mean, one of the most incredible collections in the world of historical art and objects and design. But then they've continued to build that with incredible contemporary ceramics or art or paintings and that. Or Howton hall in Norfolk, the Marquis of Cholmondeley is another kind of incredible house where there's this dialogue of taste, of culture, of time, of history bouncing back and Forwards. And that, for me, is very, very exciting and interesting. And that's what decoration brings to life, its atmosphere. It's infused with an understanding of historical architecture and decoration and design and. Yeah, you know, I love designing within a knowledge of the history of interior design. I love that. But. But it's not it. You don't want it to become a sort of a straight jacket. Right. You don't want it to become something that is constricting. I described. I was. Right. I was talking about this with somebody else the other day and I said, it's a bit like your granny. She's old, but, you know, she actually can look quite cool in a leather jacket or a T shirt. She doesn't just have to wear granny clothes.
- [20:43]
Caroline
Right, right.
- [20:46]
Ben Pentreath
Once. You always want to dress her with respect.
- [20:48]
Caroline
Now I'm picturing my grandmother in a leather jacket.
- [20:51]
Ben Pentreath
They want to make her look like something she's not, you know, so. Yeah. Anyway.
- [20:56]
Caroline
Well, I really. I've mentioned this before in the podcast. Anytime we have an English designer, but I am always so, like, struck by the. I feel like the English do the best job at having both, like, grand and humble together. You know, there's this. A grand country house, the scale, the proportion, the history. But then there's something about the way the rooms are put together that feels so every day. And I mean this in the best way possible.
- [21:32]
Ben Pentreath
Totally. And I can still make a mess. I think that there's a.
- [21:38]
Caroline
Maybe it's a cultural thing.
- [21:40]
Ben Pentreath
I think it's partly a cultural thing. I do. I think it's partly. I observed this when I was working in America. If we think about an American architect or an American decorator doing English taste, which obviously is. It's a powerful look. It's kind of like our greatest export industry of all time is, like, English decoration. It's sort of universally loved around the world as a design language. But very, very often, if you're an American client or an American decorator, quite often your main experience of traditional interior decoration in England is actually not in people's houses, it's in hotels. Like, you're actually staying in really lovely country house hotels or whatever. But inevitably, inevitably, they're just a tiny bit more polished, comfortable, functional, operational, like put together. They're a bit more put together than a real old English.
- [22:43]
Caroline
Yeah, yeah.
- [22:44]
Ben Pentreath
And some of the country houses in the. You know, some of the country houses in the book, there's a sort of. Yeah, there's a sort of. I mean, if you look at a really beautiful historical house, you Know the famous houses of England. You know, the great country houses of England, which we all know through either visiting them and, you know, when they're open to the public or you can. Hundreds of books on historical houses. You know, many. Many produced by Rizzoli and many written by a great friend of mine called Jeremy Musson, who's a fantastic author on this whole subject. But there's a sort of nonchalance to English decoration proper, how people in England live in their houses that an awful lot of Americans don't quite have, that they're just. Things are just a bit too well done.
- [23:35]
Caroline
It's true. It's true.
- [23:36]
Ben Pentreath
And they're a little bit too matchy. They're a little bit too kind of like everything is done in a moment and then kind of laid out on a plate and provided. And I mean, really posh people in England, like, really, really posh Aristotle people in England, they do hire decorators secretly. They very often say to their friends, oh, I did all of this myself. But the one thing. Oh, yeah, but the one thing that the decorator never gets to do is that much like you're choosing a paint color for the room, and you might be getting a new set of curtains made, and you might be buying one new sofa, because the sofa that's been in the room since 1930 has just totally given up the ghost. Or you might be recovering a couple of chairs and moving some things around that you found in the attic or kind of whatever. But what you're not ever doing in a traditional English interior, particularly those big grand ones, you're never starting from scratch. Like, you're never faced with a completely blank room, and then you've got to start. And so there's something about that task of starting with the completely blank room and then. Which is how an American house is very often decorated. You know, they're not coming to the building.
- [24:56]
Caroline
No.
- [24:56]
Ben Pentreath
With loads of baggage.
- [24:57]
Caroline
No.
- [24:58]
Ben Pentreath
And the decorator is given quite a free reign to sort of start from scratch.
- [25:03]
Caroline
And I think that's what often designers would say was, like, the dream project.
- [25:09]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah.
- [25:10]
Caroline
Doing a whole room from zero. Yeah.
- [25:13]
Ben Pentreath
That's my nightmare. I find it totally overwhelming. Starting completely from scratch, where somebody says, I don't have a stick of furniture. I don't have a single painting, I don't have a book. You've got to get me everything right.
- [25:29]
Caroline
Because where do you start for me.
- [25:31]
Ben Pentreath
Is a total nightmare. And one of the things is it's actually incredibly. I mean, it's easy to advise people on sofas. And upholstery and ottomans and bits of antique furniture and stuff like that. It is actually relatively easy because the styles, the shapes, I can tell you, this is my go to company to go and buy sofas, like go and sit in them. They've got a fantastic work. Howard and Sons, you know, they've got a great workshop in Camden. They'll make your cushions for you exactly how you like them. They're kind of the Rolls Royce of sofas or the Bentley of sofas. And you know, they're going to stand the test of time. Everybody loves the Howard and Sons sofa. And so that's fine. Where it gets really tough for me, I find it. I really struggle buying things which are personal for people, like pictures. I really find it hard to buy a painting for somebody because for me you shouldn't be choosing a painting because it matches an interior or actually contrast clashes with an interior, whatever. It shouldn't be the same as the cushion. It's like a different thing. It's an art, it's an object. It's an art object. It was painted, it was created by a person at some step, maybe very recently, maybe in history. You know, it's not, it's not something to kind of like add the little kind of dash of lemon to your, to your decoration scheme or necessarily even to be the starting point of the decoration scheme. It's. These things are very personal and you need that sense of personal engagement with people. I think it's like buying libraries for people. And there are one or two people I know in the world who will buy a library for somebody who has no books, where it feels totally convincing like that. This is the library of a person who has collected a lot of books.
- [27:21]
Caroline
We need to have them on the podcast. That sounds fascinating.
- [27:24]
Ben Pentreath
Kinsey.
- [27:25]
Caroline
Okay.
- [27:25]
Ben Pentreath
Kinsey Marable. Kinsey Marable. He's my great friend. Yeah, definitely. And his house is in this month's quarters. Frederick magazine, I think you'll find, I think he's on the COVID He's a great friend and he's fantastic and he's. But, you know, and there are people here. Hayward Hill Book Store in London will build a beautiful library for you. But all too often, even that, you know, if, if you, if you go through the danger, as I see time after time after time in the monthly decoration max clicking, you know, flicking on my book on my desk, it's kind of. You can just see that the decoration assistant was going click, click, click, click, click, Click, click on Amazon.com through the, through the Taschen Website and various other. And just, you know, a whole series of packaged books that we've just all seen the spines again and again. I don't know, you know, I'm not going to name and shame the brands of those books, but we all know them. We know them so well that CGI companies producing CGI illustrations.
- [28:33]
Caroline
Oh, they put them into software.
- [28:35]
Ben Pentreath
Oh, they've got all of those books and software literally perfectly. The perfect finds. Yeah. So. And there has to be that degree of personality, and it comes through those nuanced little bits and pieces which I somewhat struggle with orchestrating and buying. I mean, if we have to, we will, and we embrace it, we go for it. I mean, I had one client, not going to tell you which one. Their house is in the book. And shortly before they were due to move in, very sadly, he and his wife separated and she took a lot of the bits and pieces. And to start with, that house felt like a bit like a sort of furniture showroom because it had some very nice furniture, some very nice curtains, it had nice table lamps in the right place, but it didn't have any star. And he. He was not the person who had the ability or the knowledge or the time actually, let alone the interest. He wasn't really interested in going shopping. You know, he's not a shopper. He likes doing skiing or kind of sailing or kind of running and things like that. You know, that's how he wants to spend his downtime. So we had. So the project decorator, I was like. I was like, okay, your job is to become this guy's wife for a while.
- [30:01]
Caroline
Yeah, yeah, shove it. Yeah.
- [30:04]
Ben Pentreath
Beautiful personal things. And we did it. And it's actually very well done, but it's. It's quite unusual for us. I much prefer somebody who's got a lot of baggage. And I. And I will always work with it. I will always, always make a way to work if something literally doesn't work. But they love it. It's still theirs and they must be allowed to have it. But from time to time, if I'm taking a photograph of the room, I might be just moving that one conveniently.
- [30:33]
Caroline
Cropped out of the butt.
- [30:34]
Ben Pentreath
Yes. Sorry, it wasn't in that page. Yeah, exactly. But that's how it is. It has to be personal.
- [30:41]
Caroline
Okay, well, Ben, you were conscious of our podcast being named how to Decorate, and I am conscious of the fact that I have watched an entire sunset and it get dark in your window. And I'm concerned for you because I think it's what, like 9:00 there.
- [30:56]
Ben Pentreath
It's only 8:00.
- [30:57]
Caroline
8:00.
- [30:57]
Ben Pentreath
Okay.
- [30:58]
Caroline
So, yeah, as I would love to chat for as long as you're available, but we have taken up. Yeah, okay, 10 minutes and then, I.
- [31:09]
Ben Pentreath
Mean, find one more question. Oh, we. We must do one more question because.
- [31:14]
Caroline
Would you like to do the decorating dilemma?
- [31:16]
Ben Pentreath
There's the design dilemma.
- [31:18]
Caroline
Yes, we can do our design dilemma.
- [31:19]
Ben Pentreath
Do you have any more. Is there anything more we should be talking about?
- [31:22]
Caroline
Oh, my gosh. I mean. Well, I did want to talk. We could do podcast, because we could.
- [31:27]
Ben Pentreath
Do podcast series kind of. Well, that's another whole. You know, that's crazy with how much.
- [31:34]
Caroline
You have on your plate. I was so surprised to read that you decided to take on doing all the photography for the book.
- [31:42]
Ben Pentreath
It's a little weird.
- [31:43]
Caroline
Yeah. And I. And I. There was a part, you know, we were talking about, like, I think you use the word nonchalance to the rooms, which I love that. It perfectly describes it. But there was points in the book where I was like, huh. I wonder if this is because he has said that he's taken a very light hand to the styling, you know, maybe some flowers or something.
- [32:03]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:04]
Caroline
And the photography, or is that just, you know, the homeowners and the way that it's designed? So I loved, I guess, seeing how natural it looked. I guess, like it truly looked as though you just walked in and taken a photo.
- [32:25]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah.
- [32:26]
Caroline
Maybe after their housekeeper had left, but, you know, on an average day.
- [32:29]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly. So what happened was, you know, as, you know, every single book ever produced in the sort of. This, this type of book, you know, there's an industry of. Of, you know, fantastic photographers. That's what they do. That they're incredibly talented, but it's a big deal. And, you know, it's lighting, it's assistance. It's kind of like. It's a. It's a big thing. And what I began to learn quite early on is that the photographers who are great at taking photographs of the atmosphere of an interior, if I'm brutally honest, we're really struggling to take a photograph of a modern housing development. And obviously half of the projects, which I was, you know, not half, but, you know, there are three. Three of those projects in. In the book where, you know, there's a whole. There's a whole separate subtlety to kind of like, oh, my gosh, it's like being patient. It's like having to. It's like. It's like if you were a fisherman, you know, Waiting for hours to catch a fish. Like it's all about being there at the right place at the right time, which sometimes means getting up at an absolute moment's notice. Like literally seeing that there was going to be a perfect sunrise in the far end of Cornwall tomorrow morning. And at 2 in the morning, despite the fact that we had people staying in our house for the weekend, I was like, set my alarm clock off, I drove, I was down there at 5am, having driven for three hours. I took photos for 45 minutes, exactly the shots that I knew that I wanted to get of the developments in Truro and then turned around, stopped to get a takeout coffee from a, from a petrol station and then drove home. And all of my friends were just waking up for breakfast and I was.
- [34:15]
Caroline
Like, oh my gosh, I've just been in back, but I know which photo you're talking about and it was gorgeous, so it was worth it.
- [34:22]
Ben Pentreath
So it would work. It actually was worth it. All the photos of want to grow and actually the skill of taking a photograph on the outside and the inside is two different kinds. It's all about achieving in a sense of atmosphere, but as you say, also for me, not making things look too polished. And so one of the things which I've observed, I mean, over years of our studio work being photographed by proper, grown up official photographers is they've got a particular way of working, which is they come into a room and it's kind of understandable if you think about how they work and what their role is. They're the photographer, right? So they come in and they put that, they decide where they're going to put their tripod and their lens and then everything else in the space has to be moved in order to kind of fit the frame. So I have spent hours of my life with nice people kind of moving sofas an inch, two inches back, inch forward, you know, moving the sofas behind the lamps, unplugging things, kind of moving the rug a fraction because it's just not quite so, you know, like insane amount of moving things around. And then they take the photograph and then they go off into the next room and decide where to put the camera down. And the rest of us have to spend the next two hours putting it all back, right? And then you start the process again. And actually as a result, as a result of that, you might, you know, off a busy shoot, you might get eight photos in a day or 10 photos in the day if you're lucky. And I mean, there will, there's One photographer who should remain totally nameless, who's actually fantastic, fantastic photographer. I love working with him. But he came to me, my house in Dorset and all day he took four photographs. It was like insane.
- [36:02]
Caroline
You never finished the book at that pace?
- [36:05]
Ben Pentreath
No, I wouldn't. And they're all on quite hefty day rates as well, as I'm sure you know. So I taught myself how to use a camera. I talk about it in the beginning. I was taught by this fantastic guy who's actually the maestro who does all the post production work and the sort of stitching together different exposures to get nice daylight through the window and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's all technical busy stuff. Peter Dixon, absolutely fantastic. My total lifesaver. And he had been the assistant to Jan, who was the. Jan Baldwin was the photographer of my first two books, who I love working with her. But she couldn't leave that publisher and come and work with Fritz. Only that would have been. That would have been too controversial. So she gave me Pizza's details and he literally held my hand all the way through. And in the early days he was there on the sheets. And then as time went on, I kind of just by observation watched what he was doing and I got my head around it. I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I got my head around it enough that I knew enough to actually take. And I've always enjoyed composing photographs and I've always enjoyed the process of photography. I've written a blog for 20 years and I've loved it. But this is different because you're driving a big complicated machine. And then what I realized very quickly was that if I was going to manage this on my own, which is much easier, it was much more nimble. It meant that I could be much more in, tuned with weather and atmosphere. And you know, if I knew there was going to be mist one morning, I was out or whatever it might be. And if I was going to manage this on my own, you actually can't. There just isn't time to spend like setting up your vision around the camera and then shifting everything. It just takes forever and weirdly so. I just learned that it's a lot easier to move the tripod around until you compose a nice shot than to put the tripod where you first put it and then to move the furniture around to get the nose shot. And so that's how I've learned to do it. And I think it, as time went on and there are some photos in the book that were taken really early days. And there are some which are much, much later, obviously, and that's just what happens. And I think there's a. There's a language which has evolved through the photography and there are some photographs which really. They are kind of like, this is it. I just came in and took a photo. Yeah. And I did take. If there was a sort of like really hideous copy of a financial magazine on top of the books. I might sort of like just pop that to one side. But not creating something that is like a sort of totally sterile kind of thing. And I think it has given, you know, now that. I mean, I've got the book here in front of me, but it. It does have a personality about it as a result, that. Which I hope means that people will want to go back to it, you know, because it is. It is quite personal. It's personal, the writing. It's personal in the projects. It's personal in. You know, I wrote it all. It wasn't ghost written by anyone. I wrote every single word. I took every single photo. It's a bit weird because I also designed every single building.
- [39:14]
Caroline
Yeah.
- [39:15]
Ben Pentreath
Not quite.
- [39:15]
Caroline
And did all the. Did all the decor.
- [39:18]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah. And so it's. I think because of that, it feels quite different. Particularly. I mean, I don't know if you've had a physical copy yet. We must get you one. But it's a chunky monkey thing.
- [39:30]
Caroline
It's amazing.
- [39:31]
Ben Pentreath
It's heavy. It's not, it's. But I think it's something which, like you said at the beginning, that you can sort of dip into, obviously. But I hope it's something which people will enjoy, you know, a little bit how we were talking about in our projects, you know, sort of. There's breadth, but there's hopefully a bit of depth.
- [39:51]
Caroline
Oh, there it is.
- [39:53]
Ben Pentreath
The digging. Just for a start. I will say I spent a lot of time thinking and writing captions. The whole separate story through all the captions. Whereas the number of times you pick up a decoration book these days and everything is. Alice is wrote, but it feels like the captions have been written by an AI. It just says stuff that you could already see.
- [40:16]
Caroline
You're so right. You're so right. I. Well, I really appreciated that you wrote it yourself and I could tell. And yeah, it was fun because there's substitute.
- [40:25]
Ben Pentreath
It's a bit exhausting from time to time, but it was. Yeah, but it was. It was great. It's been a really fantastic price. Right. Design dilemma, decoration.
- [40:34]
Caroline
Yes. We're going to do that there was one room in particular I just had to call out to you. You may have not even noticed it, but there was one kitchen. And this is where I was like, see, this is so approachable. I love this. This is why I'm going to revisit it. There's one kitchen and there was a. Like the. Under it was a blue island, and at the bottom of the island, it was like storage space. And there was what looked like an inflatable shark. Yes. And I was like, this is fabulous. Because he truly. This is what real people.
- [41:09]
Ben Pentreath
That is. Okay, I'll tell you about that kitchen. But if you want to see kind of what that kitchen looked like when we first finished and when the professional photographers took the photos, that has got photographed about eight years ago or ten years ago by House and Garden magazine in the uk. And if you type in Ben Pentry's blue kitchen into the Internet, I guarantee that that will kind of swamp you because it was on the COVID and it became just one of those rooms that just did the rounds on Instagram. It went crazy. And they're very beautiful photographs. I can't actually remember.
- [41:40]
Caroline
Oh, it's a gorgeous face.
- [41:42]
Ben Pentreath
But they were lovely. And then they've had kids and the kids have got new little brothers and sisters popping along and blah, blah, blah. And there is a lot of stuff now wedged into that kitchen island. And when it was first done, it was like a big series of three big terracotta bowls or something. Like things that, like, kitchen stuff that never get touched. They're just antiques in the corner. And then very quickly, I don't know where those. I haven't seen them in years, but now it's just wedged with toys and stuff like that. So I was in there taking photos and I was like. And I was on my own. And I was like, if I even touch this, it's going to take me 10 hours to take it all out. And it's going to take me 15 hours to put it all back. And I just don't have the patience. So just. I'm just going to. And it has slightly or not. I've shown the book to one or two people and they've gone. Really? And I was like, didn't you even want to take the plastic shark out? And I said, as soon as I took one thing out, then I'd never be able to stop.
- [42:39]
Caroline
What's the line?
- [42:40]
Ben Pentreath
Unraveling a piece of wool, you know, on a small.
- [42:43]
Caroline
Well, I have two kids, so this made me feel so much better. About myself because I was like, see, look, the inflatable shark made it into the book. So I'm good.
- [42:51]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly. Exactly. Excellent. Excellent. Good. I'm glad you liked that.
- [42:55]
Caroline
I did, I did.
- [42:55]
Ben Pentreath
That's your favorite house.
- [42:56]
Caroline
And it would be a great little sort of like scavenger hunt for our listeners to go find the inflatable.
- [43:01]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly. Yes. Very good.
- [43:03]
Caroline
All right, well, let's do Braden's decorating dilemma and then I will let you go to bed. Hi. I love listening to your podcast every week and look forward to new episodes. For my drive into work, my dilemma is actually for the exterior of my house. I'm planning to work on some landscaping for the front, but I'm stumped otherwise. I don't like how it feels a bit dated and not cohesive with the four different colors and materials. It's definitely a bit builder grade. The siding is vinyl, so I will be leaving that. But have thought about painting the brick to match, adding window grids, painting the shutters and front door. Should I leave the brick or paint it? Paint the shutters, leave the shutters, add shutters to the bottom windows. Tell me what to think.
- [43:44]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, there was a great, it was a great question. The first thing I thought, sort of slight elephant in the room a little bit. It's the garage door. And the. When she was mentioning the. When she was mentioning the, you know, the landscaping, I think that's absolutely crucial. You've got this lawn and you've got the kind of the front driveway. And I think the really first question I'd ask here, it's an interesting one, is like, is the garage actually being used for car storage? Because, you know, my parents had a garage which was absolutely massive, which they obviously filled up with a million things, and that's kind of normal. But they also kept their car in it every night. Like, my dad had a brand new car, but he was just that generation that I have to put my car in the garage every night, otherwise it's going to disintegrate or melt in the rain or it's going to be stolen. They lived in a very safe place. Like now people don't really put their car away ever.
- [44:43]
Caroline
Right.
- [44:43]
Ben Pentreath
So one one thought I had is like, that is a massive, beautiful, big room in there by the looks of things. And I wondered whether, I mean, maybe not for right now, but, you know, in time does that actually become part of your living accommodation of the house? And you could take out the giant garage door, which is quite unfriendly. It's like it's kind of like.
- [45:03]
Caroline
And it's so white.
- [45:04]
Ben Pentreath
It's so white. It goes back to what we were talking about with the, you know, right at the beginning. A world designed around cars. The most important thing in that house at the moment is the car or the garage, the storage for the car. So I was thinking, wow, that could make an amazing room with windows and doors and French doors. And you could have a beautiful patio or something outside. A garden right outside it. And the car could just be in the foreground, parked. I'm assuming that the access street is. This is kind of right behind us. And then I. I was also thinking about the amazing roof up there in the garage. That's another big roof. And that would look really beautiful with a little dormer window or something to break up that roof, but actually bring light into that space. You might be able to do some fun things there. Anyway, that's like kind of not answering the question which we were asked to do. I would definitely add grids on the windows or glazing bars, you know, as they're called in England, so that you. Because the two big panes, top and bottom, is quite. It's quite starry, it's quite. It's a little bit unfriendly looking. And if they can. With a local joiner or carpenter. I don't know if the windows are made of timber or plastic. Probably timber, because I think she's talking about painting them. But if they can just plant on the outside glazing bars, just nicely detailed, and divide them up equally so that the top and bottom panes, at the moment, they're one pane of glass. Split them into three panes wide and two panes high. So that each pane is called six over six. So we've got six panes over six panes. I know from just looking at the shape of the windows, they will look really nice, much nicer. So I think that's a really great thing to do. The second thing I would recommend is that the shutters either need to actually come off the house entirely or if. Or if the owner would like shutters, for me, they need to be taken off and then she needs to put bigger ones on because they're too small to actually shut over the window.
- [47:06]
Caroline
Right.
- [47:06]
Ben Pentreath
And that always really annoys me because then it looks like the shutters are totally fake because they can't move. They're stuck on. And if you did wrench them off the wall and shut them over the windows, there'd still be a massive gap.
- [47:19]
Caroline
Right, right.
- [47:20]
Ben Pentreath
In Other words, they're not really doing what they pretending to do anyway. My advice actually might be just to take them off. I think they make the facade look a little bit busier than they, and they need to. And rather than painting them, I just kind of remove them. Now, there might be somewhere they can be reused in, like in the garden, in a little structure by a greenhouse or something like that. You might be able to do something with them creatively. But I would take them off the facade, and I think it would look better. So then if we move downstairs to the brick, I agree that I think there are too many materials going on, and it looks a little bit discordant. I think that I wouldn't add shutters down there, because actually you've got the porch, the veranda, so you don't really need additional shade kind of for the windows. And I think that either to replicate the same siding in the same color and to carry that down, that material down, I think would look much better. Or if that doesn't quite work from a technical point of view or from, you know, it's too expensive to add siding, then I would definitely paint the lower portion the same color as the siding to match. But I think it would look actually nicer if you did the whole thing in siding.
- [48:29]
Caroline
Okay.
- [48:30]
Ben Pentreath
The big posts on the veranda, they're quite chunky and square. Again, it could be too expensive and too complicated to do anything about those. But if you could do something about those, they would look nicer if it was slightly thinner timber posts, maybe with a little. With a little bracket or something, just to sort of finish off up top. And then obviously, what would be really fun. I don't know which way the house faces, what the direction is, but it would be really fun to have a bench or some chairs or something out there. Just even if you're not really going to sit out there, it gives the idea that you could it out.
- [49:11]
Caroline
Right.
- [49:12]
Ben Pentreath
And it just looks a little bit friendlier.
- [49:15]
Caroline
What about paint color? I mean, would.
- [49:19]
Ben Pentreath
I would. I would. If the. If the sort of pale, sandy color, the sort of mushroomy color of the siding can't be changed, which I do understand, if it's a vinyl siding, it's probably that. That wouldn't be a good idea to paint it, because it'll probably just peel off in five years or something, you might be able to find a color which could. A paint type that can stick on. But if that's not part of the go, then I would keep those walls, obviously, that color, and I would Keep the trim white or off white.
- [49:46]
Caroline
Okay.
- [49:47]
Ben Pentreath
You know, I wouldn't. I would. I think that looks good. And then the door. I can't quite tell what color the door is, but I think it looks like green. Blue.
- [49:55]
Caroline
Oh, blue.
- [49:56]
Ben Pentreath
Blue or green. Yeah, yeah. Rather than. Because the shutters look like they're black. I think that's a nice color for the door. I mean, you could do any color with the door. It could be. Literally any color is going to go with that sandy palette. Could be. Could be green, could be blue, could be red, could be whatever you. Whatever you love. And then I think that planting. Planting. Planting is the thing. If you could break up the width of the. Of the driveway, if you can get more plants climbing up the house, that would be a beautiful thing. You need to encourage some climbing parts.
- [50:27]
Caroline
She's got the perfect place for that. For, like, a climbing rope.
- [50:30]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, yeah. And train it up right there. Yeah.
- [50:34]
Caroline
One side. Have it go over the porch over to the garage door.
- [50:39]
Ben Pentreath
It would make a massive difference. It would really soften the whole thing. It would really, really soften it down. And it would look. It would look fantastic.
- [50:48]
Caroline
Yeah. I love. I mean, the softness of planting is going to make a huge difference.
- [50:54]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly. There's a famous. Obviously a very famous American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. And he has a perfect expression. Not that I'm applying it to this building, but it's one which I. If from time to time, we do something where I'm like, oops, that hasn't quite worked, and you say, maybe we should just put a climbing plant up here. Frank Lloyd. Frank. Frank said, doctors can bury their mistakes. Architects must resort to plants.
- [51:25]
Caroline
I've never heard that before, but I love that.
- [51:27]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah. So you can look it up on Wikipedia. It's. I mean, it's not the precise words, but it's basically, artists can bury their mistakes. Architects must resort to planting.
- [51:35]
Caroline
Well, it'll give. It'll give your house a little mystery, Braden.
- [51:39]
Ben Pentreath
Which I think it would really soften it. It would really soften it, and it would add. It would. It would add a layer. It would really add a layer. Yeah.
- [51:47]
Caroline
Ben, I cannot thank you enough. This was wonderful. I could talk to you for another hour, but I won't. Yes.
- [51:54]
Ben Pentreath
It's really lovely to meet you, Caroline.
- [51:57]
Caroline
Likewise.
- [51:57]
Ben Pentreath
Good luck with everything.
- [51:58]
Caroline
Thank you. You, too.
- [51:59]
Ben Pentreath
Thanks very much. Really enjoyed it.
- [52:01]
Caroline
And that's our show. You can find all of the show notes on our blog howtodecorate.com podcast to send in a decorating dilemma. Email your questions to podcast ballard designs.net so we can help you with your space. And of course, be sure to follow us on social media at Ballard Designs. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. And please leave us a review. We'd love to hear your feedback. Until next time, happy decorating.