← Talk Shop with Ariel Okin: A Fenimore Lane Production
Talk Shop with Ariel Okin: A Fenimore Lane Production
Ben Pentreath // An English Vision, from Urban Planning to Designing Beautiful Homes
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- [00:00]
Ben Pentreath
When you really think about the things which made you really tick as a young child, they're exactly the same things which still interest you now. And I guarantee they will still be the same things which are interesting you when you're 80 or 90 and you're that same person all through your life. And one of the best things you can do in life if you want to be a happy person, is to kind of realize what that is and then embrace it and enjoy it.
- [00:25]
Arielle Ogan
Welcome to Talkshop. I'm Arielle Ogan, a New York based interior designer, writer and editor looking to bring a little bit of magic into our homes every day. After years as a writer and editor in the interiors world, I founded my own editorial site, Fenimore Lane, in 2020 and the TalkShop interview series was born. Each week I delve into the personal experiences of the top interior designers and tastemakers around the globe. This week I'm joined by a guest whose prolific work in the architecture and interiors worlds is quite literally historic. Ben Pentreath is an English architectural and interior designer whose firm has become known for its brilliant master planning and urban development, along with incredibly detailed and beautiful private homes and playful interiors all over the world. As Ben says, we love designing places that work beautifully for the long term and feel right for the place. Ben's background is in art history, which he studied at the University of Edinburgh before attending the Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture. He he worked for five years in New York at Fairfax and Sammons, and then with the Princess foundation before starting his own practice in 2004. In 2023, Ben was awarded the Richard H. Driehaus Prize, given to a living architect whose work embodies the highest principles of traditional and classical architecture and urbanism in contemporary society, reflecting positive cultural, environmental and artistic impacts. Ben is one of the youngest laureates of the award. Along the way, Ben has also established himself as an author with regular contributions to the Financial Times and other journals, as well as three fantastic books which I adore. His most recent book, An English A monograph of the work of his practice is now available. So please join me as we welcome Ben to the podcast.
- [02:11]
Charlie
Ben, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you on.
- [02:15]
Ben Pentreath
Thank you very much. It's great to be here.
- [02:18]
Charlie
Well, to kick off the conversation, we ask everyone who comes on, can you describe your style in three words or less?
- [02:26]
Ben Pentreath
No, I can't.
- [02:29]
Charlie
I love that you said no because you're the first person and I've been waiting for someone to say no.
- [02:35]
Ben Pentreath
I hate having to sum up the world in three words. You know what I mean?
- [02:39]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [02:40]
Ben Pentreath
How many words are in my book? 30,000. So that would be a good starting point.
- [02:44]
Charlie
Quite hefty. It's right next to me, actually.
- [02:48]
Ben Pentreath
Am I allowed not to give you a three word answer? I did give you a three word answer.
- [02:51]
Charlie
Absolutely.
- [02:52]
Ben Pentreath
I was like, no, I can't. So that's good. Great. I'm glad to be the first.
- [02:57]
Charlie
It's funny, I was talking to Sarah about how much I love your book and I was saying it's so authentic, like it's so authentically written. And I love that you just gave that answer. And for those who may not know, walk listeners through a little bit about yourself, where you are at this point in your life right now.
- [03:14]
Ben Pentreath
I can indeed. Yeah. So I am indeed an architectural and interior designer based in London, England. We work all over the uk. We do a lot of projects actually all over the world now. We're doing quite a few projects in Europe and some lovely houses in Australia and New Zealand. And I'm working for an old client in of mine in Ojai, California at the moment, on and off. So that's fun. And we're a little bit unusual compared to a lot of designers because as you'll have seen in the book, we do a lot of, you know, the more conventional things, which is basically doing up people's houses. And you might be designing a new house, you might be doing working on a beautiful old house and restoring it or extending it and making iterations. And obviously there are lots of architects, architectural designers who work in interior design and there are lots of interior designers who get involved in architecture. And I think that's actually a really wonderful mix. And I'm always a bit suspicious, ambitious of architects who don't want to kind of get involved in interiors because, you know, let's face it, that's how we all live. You live in rooms and spaces and buildings. They're not really a pure object. They're not a sculpture, you know, they're a place for people to live in. But I think what makes us a little bit different is that we also do a lot of urban design and master planning and town planning, which you'll have seen one or two examples of in the book.
- [04:43]
Charlie
Yes. Which is so cool to read about.
- [04:46]
Ben Pentreath
It's amazing. And it's like, it is a really fun part of the different scales at which we operate. And obviously there are lots of architectural designers and architects who work in master planning and town planning because after all, town plans in a way are just made up of lots of buildings. But I don't think there are many people involved who do all three.
- [05:10]
Charlie
No, I think you might be the only one.
- [05:12]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, exactly. So I think I probably said it somewhere in the introduction of the book. You know, I do have some pretty strange days. I mean, I had a day today where I was in the office in the studio, you know, this morning I was looking at detailed layouts for our big new town that we're building, which I write about in the book, up in Scotland, in the Highlands of Scotland, near Inverness. And I was sitting with the clients and one of the house builders, and we were going through kind of quite major strategic stuff on the street network and all of that stuff, landscape design and everything. Big, big picture things. And then I literally walked out of that meeting, and then I was sitting with one of the interior design leaders in the studio going through really detailed questions about furniture and rugs and lamps and lighting for a couple of houses that we're working on.
- [06:07]
Charlie
That's wild.
- [06:08]
Ben Pentreath
I actually love that change of scale and that change of pace. It's one of the things which I find very, I don't know, like, exciting about life. Because every day is a little bit different.
- [06:20]
Charlie
Yeah. I mean, it takes a certain type of brain and person. It's so incredibly hard to zoom in and out like that. So you have to be able to sort of. To be able to go from town planning and urban planning to what's the trim gonna be on the sofa? Is hard.
- [06:36]
Ben Pentreath
It's hard in a way. And then in another sort of way, it's actually kind of in a weird sort of way, it's all part of the same big conversation. And one of the things which has struck me is that as I've been doing a few events and speaking a little bit about the book, and actually, when I post on our Instagram page on our social media, it's fascinating that. I mean, obviously if I put up a photograph of a nice kitchen or something like that, you know, you get a really nice reaction. Everyone's like, oh, please tell me this. Can you tell me the paint color? Where did you get the light fitting? Whatever.
- [07:11]
Charlie
Of course.
- [07:11]
Ben Pentreath
Actually, I find that some of the biggest engagement that we get, like, where I mean, by which I mean people commenting or really intrigued or wanting to discover more, is when I post a little bit about these bigger picture projects. And of course, that's because we're all. Everybody listening to your podcast or reading your blog. Everybody is a visual person, you know, they're in it because they're interested in their surroundings, really. Like, that's why we all. That's what we do as interior designers, or that's what we do as architects. You know, we're actually into creating beautiful, workable, practical, civilized surroundings. And in my head, there's absolutely no difference really between doing that for somebody's living room and doing it for a town or for a city. It's all part of the same huge, big conversation. It feels as if in the day, in the world that we live in, it feels as if, you know, when one's getting into large scale planning, master planning, it all feels very complex and complicated. And it's true. You've got to get a lot of, you know, there's lots of planning in England, there's probably more so than in America, in the United States, but there's a massive amount of sort of bureaucracy and approvals and all the rest of it that you have to go through. Whereas if you're just choosing somebody's living room, you've got to put. You've got one person to persuade or maybe two.
- [08:39]
Charlie
And sometimes there's a lot of red tape there too.
- [08:42]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, there's a bit of red tape. Let's face it, there can be a lot of red tape. But one of the things which I draw real inspiration from is that if you go back into the 16th or the 17th or the 18th or even into the 19th century, architects and designers didn't make any distinction about these things at all. So if you, if we take a great 18th century architects, I'm sure a lot of your listeners will have heard of Robert Adam, for instance. He was one of the Great Late 18th century English designers and he designed very famous country houses and he did designs for incredible city and urban planning. He was very involved in the beautiful new town of Edinburgh in Scotland, the capital city of Scotland, which sort of went through this massive expansion in the late 18th century. And he designed some of the most beautiful streets and squares around that Charlotte Square. And he was also designing sofas and upholstery and silver vases and vessels for people's dining rooms.
- [09:45]
Charlie
Fascinating.
- [09:45]
Ben Pentreath
And he was designing picture frames and he was designing doorknobs, you know, he was. And plaster ceilings and light fittings and everything.
- [09:55]
Charlie
I mean, it's really a continuation of history, I think, so much of your work. And I love that you said authentic, because as I'm reading, I'm about halfway through your book right now and it's so fantastic to read. And one of the things that keeps Hitting me is the way you write so authentically too.
- [10:11]
Ben Pentreath
Thank you, that's very kind.
- [10:13]
Charlie
No, I mean it's. There's no pretense in it and you can just see that there's like an authentic love for what you do and an appreciation that you haven't. You're not jaded by the fact that you get to do these things. You really have a sense of awe about it, which I love.
- [10:28]
Ben Pentreath
It is quite a personal book, I realize it is.
- [10:31]
Charlie
Yeah. And you photographed the whole thing yourself, which is fantastic.
- [10:34]
Ben Pentreath
I mean, I'm lucky that I've always enjoyed words and I've always loved reading and you know, that's actually my original background is, you know, art history. History of. Art history of architecture and I've always loved words writing and reading.
- [10:49]
Charlie
Yeah. I feel like so many architects, you know, you're always so curious and rooted in history, especially architects who work in the classical sort of world. And so you're constantly reading and I think it's such an interesting facet of what you do.
- [11:03]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah. Although we've got a fantastic poster by Andy Warhol on my office wall which says I never read. I just look at the pictures and when I'm dealing with old architectural history books, I will tell you, we're looking at the pictures.
- [11:17]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [11:19]
Ben Pentreath
I've got a lot of books on my shelf and I can tell you I use them entirely as an image resource library. And it's a much hysterical accurate image resource library. And my information retrieval system is a lot faster than working on Google because Google takes you down terrible rabbit holes of just misunderstanding or kind the wrong thing. Whereas if you can remember your. Which book you're thinking of, you know, you can pull that book out and there's something physical about a library, isn't there? And about sort of memory to do with kind of physical books, physical pages, which means that you can actually find a drawing of a house or whatever it is you might be looking for like weirdly quite quickly. So I love looking at old books in the office for the visuals, for.
- [12:07]
Charlie
The pictures I think also, I mean knowing that your background is in art history, you studied at Edinburgh, right?
- [12:13]
Ben Pentreath
University. Yeah.
- [12:14]
Charlie
Were you always interested in architecture and design, even as a kid?
- [12:19]
Ben Pentreath
Yes, for as long as I can really remember. And then the funny thing is we've. We've literally just been. Charlie and I, my husband and I have just been leaving house, which has been a major thing and we've been packing up and in the process of packing up, I've been going through. But Actually, as part of that, like I was going through tons and tons of boxes and, you know, things from the attic and, you know, which you haven't really looked at in the last 15 years. And sure enough, there are all of the little drawings that I was doing on which I've somehow my mom kept, I guess initially in the life.
- [12:49]
Charlie
I love that. I always find that fascinating because I think people have it in them before they even realize it's in them. I think it's something that you're just sort of, you're, you're blessed with it and you're born with it.
- [13:00]
Ben Pentreath
I've got a great friend who may be on your radar screen. He's an architect. He's a classical architect in England called George Saumare Smith. We've just been great friends for years and years. But he's got a fantastic line which I often quote or maybe I misquote, but I always attribute it to him. I'm not sure if it's where he says, you are as a child who you are as an adult and vice versa. You are as an adult who you were as a child. And there is this sort of, I believe that sense in life somehow and it's sort of promulgated by the media a lot, by the kind of self help industry a lot where people are constantly being told that they can and that they must change. You know, we're always being told that we must change. But actually when you really think about the things which made the six year old you like, interested, the things which made you really tick as a young child, they're exactly the same things which still interest you now and I guarantee they will still be the same things which are interesting. You when you're 80 or 90, it's just like, and you all through your life and one of the best things you can do in life if you want to be a happy person, is to kind of realize what that says.
- [14:19]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [14:19]
Ben Pentreath
And then embrace it and enjoy it.
- [14:21]
Charlie
Absolutely. Well, so you, you come to London, right?
- [14:24]
Ben Pentreath
Yes.
- [14:25]
Charlie
You're young. I mean, you're right. Sort of out of, out of school.
- [14:28]
Ben Pentreath
Yes. I had graduated from Edinburgh. I went to work for a fantastic person who I'm very. I write about Charles a little bit in the book. I'm very close friends with him and his family. Like his kids were all kind of like very little, some of them when, when I was working there and they're now all grown up and have got kids of their own. And it's just sort of fantastic. It's, it's amazing how fast life goes by.
- [14:52]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [14:52]
Ben Pentreath
But I worked for him. Charles Morris was his name. And he's still practicing. Like, he's an incredible architect. And I was effectively in almost like an apprenticeship scenario with him. I've been lucky enough to sort of meet him while I was at Edinburgh University. But he basically, you know, because I was completely unqualified, like, I had no architectural degree. And he basically said, look, I think you need to get into architecture. And, you know, why don't you come into a summer job in my. In my cdo? So I joined his office. There were sort of. It was a small practice. There were sort of five people, five or six people there. And then that turned into a job. And I spent two years working for Charles, and it was the most amazing experience. Like, incredible kind of foundation stone and then another amazing foundation stone for me. There was, in London in the late 90s, mid-90s, there was this incredible, zany, fantastic, completely chaotic, utterly brilliant architectural school, which had been set up by the former Prince of Wales, now the King. King Charles. But when he was Prince of Wales and he was getting very interested in architecture, as you will probably know, one of the problems that he had identified in his head and his writing and his sort of research on everything was that one of the big failures in architecture was that there was this incredibly rigid architectural education, which was basically like, if I'm being rude, it was basically brainwashing people to turn into kind of like, weird, kind of crazy, slightly tortured kind of modernist architects, creating a community of people who, you know, were only capable of talking to each other. You know, kind of not to just kind of quote, unquote, the man or the woman on the street, the person on the street, you know, and actually, when you look at a lot of very abstracted, very weird kind of contemporary architecture where they're not really buildings as most people would recognize them, they're kind of like sculptural objects or they're art or, you know, whatever, but they're almost created with a very limited audience in mind. You know, they're actually created to please a very small number of architectural critics and then to challenge everyone else, which is quite a crazy way of perceiving with an art that is ultimately incredibly public and has to be enjoyed or endured by thousands or millions of people who have no business with that building. Buildings aren't private. Architecture is a. Is a public art. It's not like a piece of contemporary sculpture that you stick in your courtyards. And if it's extremely challenging or Offensive or kind of whatever, you know, you can shock your friends when they come round. It belongs to everyone in a way. So he was realizing that this sort of architectural education was part of it. And so they set up. He set up a fantastic architectural school in London, which I was very lucky to go to for a year. And that was another real foundation stone of, sort of cornerstone of my early, you know, figuring what's it all about type of thing, through some of my lovely contacts at the Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture. You know, they had a lot of outreach, actually, in the college with some of the classical architects and designers and master planners in the. In the us and so I just got it into my head one day, I mean, literally got it into my head one day that I wanted to move to New York. So I got in touch with Ann and Richard Fairfax and Sammons. I was incredibly lucky that they took a chance on me and gave me a job, because Richard is, again, like, he's an amazingly talented classical architect. He's one of the most thoughtful of all of them. He's really. Richard is incredibly knowledgeable, but he's not academic. He's not bookish, but he really knows. But he had also worked out an amazing. His sort of own architectural classicism almost from first principles. For me, at that particular moment, it was like the most incredible training to have, actually. I mean, I don't think I could have worked anywhere where I would have had that. It was the most amazing dose of, like, really rigorous and slightly intellectual, but not, as I say, not bookie and academic, but it was, like, very thought through, like really rigorous. But then at the same time, I was also living in New York at the end of the 1990s, as a young, happy person, I had the most amazing time. It was an incredible experience and a lot of what I was doing there was working with old. The restoration of old buildings. I did three or four really wonderful projects over the sort of four and a half, five years that I was there.
- [19:46]
Charlie
As I'm listening, what's striking me that's so fascinating is during that period of time there was such a focus on modern and contemporary architecture, like you're saying, and you're sort of almost like bucking the trend and you're going all in on classicism and really.
- [20:01]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, I think for me, I actually love modern architecture. And I think one of the things which is very interesting is that in England, maybe less so in America, but in the UK, in the sort of 80s and, you know, 70s, 80s, 90s, there was this real sort of almost like a style war between modernism and. And classicism and traditional architecture?
- [20:23]
Charlie
Yes.
- [20:23]
Ben Pentreath
I think where we are standing now and design. Actually, war is too strong a word in interiors.
- [20:31]
Charlie
No, but you know what, it's funny because Gil and also Peter, when they were on the show, it's all the same time that they sort of started and they were really interested in classicism and it wasn't like the cool thing to do at the time. And I think that's so fascinating.
- [20:46]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly.
- [20:47]
Charlie
And as I'm reading the book too, I mean, I think there's these basic premises that speak to why you choose to take on new projects as well. You believe in these core tenants of architecture and the type of architecture that you practice, and then you sort of take it in different directions depending on what the unique challenges are when working on those specific projects, whether it's. Whether it's residential or town planning. And it's very interesting, and especially because you do so many different facets.
- [21:14]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah, exactly.
- [21:16]
Charlie
Is there anything. Favorite element of it?
- [21:19]
Ben Pentreath
I think that there is something about the scale of the urban design projects that. I don't know, it just. It feels very emotionally satisfying at the end of the day.
- [21:29]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [21:29]
Ben Pentreath
You know, it's very easy to say, oh, yes, certain things are more valuable than other things. And that's just not true. Like, actually, to be entirely honest, it can be as creatively satisfying or more creatively satisfying. Satisfying pulling together like a beautiful interior for somebody, then kind of.
- [21:49]
Charlie
Yeah, you establish these close relationships with clients and then, you know, there's something very personal about interior work.
- [21:56]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly. But it's also. What's nice about it is it's. It's actually quite quick in a way. I mean, it. Look, it can. It can be quick, it can be slow, depending on the projects and all the rest of it. And I don't like decorating where it's just laid out on a plate. Here you go. Do you want option A? Do you want option B? Like that. That side of things, you know, the flip side of the burdensome side of the town planning is, my gosh, you've got to go through a lot of very, very, very boring meetings and processes with a lot of, you know, it's like a horror show of kind of dealing with.
- [22:31]
Charlie
Well, it's all the bureaucracy.
- [22:32]
Ben Pentreath
Bureaucracy, engineers, ecology. Environmental is so tedious.
- [22:41]
Charlie
Yeah, I'm sure.
- [22:42]
Ben Pentreath
Whereas the beauty of the decoration side of things is. I mean, it's. Obviously, you know, everything takes time. We all know that nothing happens overnight, but it's a bit more like painting, you know, or cooking. It's like you add things, you take things away, you add a color, you take it away. And it's sort of like, that's really wonderful. And also the other thing, may I say, is that actually the whole point about decoration is that it's not meant to last a long time.
- [23:11]
Charlie
Right? Yeah. Because you're supposed to.
- [23:12]
Ben Pentreath
I mean, you want your frames of your chairs or your sofas to last forever, and you want to design things that are, wherever possible, made with natural materials that, when their life has come to an end, they can just be put in the compost heap and biodegrade. And we don't want all of our fabrics to be made of kind of like hideous plastic foams and rubbers and all of this stuff. Right. So that there is a natural cycle, but there's a beauty about, you know, so there's that whole side of things in our world of decoration where it's to do with, can it be repaired? Will it get better the older it gets? You know, can you actually source old furniture rather than everything being made new and so on and so forth? And we've. We've just. Charlie and I have just, as I say, moved house. And we've, you know, endorse it. And it's photographed quite a lot in the book. It actually peeps up on the front cover of the book. There's this beautiful old sofa that my mom and dad had.
- [24:11]
Charlie
Is that it? I'm looking at it right now. That Cintzi in the. In the yellow room that arrived in.
- [24:16]
Ben Pentreath
Our house when my mum and dad moved house a few years ago, about 10 years ago, and they. They had to get rid of it. It wasn't going to fit in their new. In their new place. And I was like. And they were, like, going to get rid of it. And I was like, no, I. This is part of my memory bank. Our entire lives have now happened on that sofa and our dogs love it and everything. And I may say that Mum and Dad pulled that sofa off a skip in, like, literally just off the street. Somebody had dumped it and my mum pulled it out. She reupholstered it. She didn't actually change the upholstery, she just changed the covers. She made new slip covers for it, which have survived since 1964 to 2024. So that's not too bad.
- [24:57]
Charlie
Is that one of your favorite things about working within design? Sort of the fact that in terms of slow decoration, you know, things are.
- [25:04]
Ben Pentreath
Personal, things have meaning, and I do I do really, really like when clients, you know, when you're working with clients in the early. In the early stages of a project, I actually really struggle to force people to get rid of things that they have owned or acquired over time.
- [25:21]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [25:21]
Ben Pentreath
Now, sometimes they will. Very convenient. Say, oh, if you don't like that, we'll put it in our other house or we'll give it to our kids or whatever. Which is like, great.
- [25:30]
Charlie
Yes.
- [25:31]
Ben Pentreath
Or not. But there is a massive difference between something being completely imperfect for the scheme, but which has meaning to them because, you know, they bought that table when they were on honeymoon in Venice or whatever it might be.
- [25:47]
Charlie
It's personal.
- [25:48]
Ben Pentreath
You know what it doesn't go. But it's been with them for a long time and it means something. And there's something very different to then just assembling everything in one go. I actually struggle when, you know, it's a weird thing. I'm sure you find this. I find this. It happens. It's life in our world. But you quite often have a client where maybe they've bought, for instance, what might actually be a second home. And so it's not like they're moving from somewhere into somewhere else. And you've got to kind of like, really make do with everything that they've got. And we look, let's face it, at the end of the day, if they have something which I don't love visually, they are so welcome to it and we will use it every single time. But I just won't take a photo.
- [26:30]
Charlie
Right, right. I love that.
- [26:32]
Ben Pentreath
And if I really don't like something, and I think that it's just really not quite right and we need to get something which is quite right for the image. Because images do matter in our world. Let's face it. I will from time to time, I mean, I do write in the book that I don't do this, but it's not quite true. I will borrow something if it's.
- [26:48]
Charlie
I loved reading. I was reading that part and I actually laughed out loud because you wrote, like, some people bring in, like all these different pillows and whatever, and they change. And it's true. I mean, people don't really realize that the behind the scenes of photography is so crazy in our industry.
- [27:02]
Ben Pentreath
It is absolutely mad. It is completely crazy. And it shows. Yeah, yeah, it always shows when something is absolutely too good to be true and it is too good to be. Be true. And then it just makes. Well, I also write in that same section, it just makes people feel bad about themselves. It's Sort of, yeah.
- [27:24]
Charlie
Well, if the client's home and you're upending the space to photograph it, of course. That's so funny.
- [27:30]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah.
- [27:31]
Charlie
What do you think? Are there any design rules that you always follow or do you think there's some that are made to be broken?
- [27:36]
Ben Pentreath
Actually there are a lot of rules, aren't there? And there are definite rules in architecture. Classical architecture is an entirely rules based game and if you get really good at it, you kind of break the rules.
- [27:47]
Charlie
Right.
- [27:48]
Ben Pentreath
I do think in decoration there are far fewer rules. Some of the most wonderful interiors that we all love and enjoy, you know, they just break every rule in the book. They are fucking crazy. I've got a wonderful friend of mine who is called Ruth Gilding. If you haven't discovered it, you will love her blog and Instagram. It's brilliant. It's that sort of vibe of kind of shabby world of interiors vibe. You know, these are interiors which basically, literally just break all of the rules, right? You know, that you must have a sofa or this or that or whatever. Now, having said all of that, there are things which you can do to kind of structure people making decisions for themselves at home and trying to work out if something is in scale or proportions or kind of whatever it might be. I mean, there are some really basic rules, aren't there, to do with things like, I don't know, sizing a lampshade, where I sometimes would start by just measuring the height of the. To the underside of the lamp and then kind of whatever that height is. I tend to think about the width of the lampshade being the diameter being the same as the height from the, from the table. You know, those little kind of tricks or something like that, you know, roughly within that sort of proportion. Genuinely, I think for me it's. Well, maybe one day when I've got nothing else to do, I'll sit down and try and write a book called how to Decorate by Ben Pentre and then I can send you the copy. It would probably be quite a good selling book actually.
- [29:22]
Charlie
I think you would do very well with that book. I think you would sell out personally.
- [29:28]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah. And books that I think are a bit more sort of emotive rules, a bit more in tune with what we're talking about and with what I'm talking about in my book is to do with things like. I mean, if you're somebody who's tackling a house for the first time and you're listening to this podcast and you think you're struggling, it's all seeming a bit overwhelming. You know, there are certain rules which I completely disobey, don't believe in. You'll often read people saying, oh, start with the rug. And then you choose everything else from the colors of the rug. Well, you know what, every now and again, I've done a room where the first thing we found was the rug. But I will tell you, that's literally one in 100.
- [30:06]
Charlie
So true. If you're working with like a natural fiber rug, you're not starting there. That's sort of like the grounding base, but you're starting with your textiles.
- [30:14]
Ben Pentreath
We very often in our projects, you know, we'll bring rugs in when everything else is finished. Literally everything else is in the room. We've done all of the upholstery, we've done the sofas, we've done the chairs, we've done the curtains, we've put up paintings, we've done everything. And then in that final, final process of the final layering of the project, there's always one where everybody almost universally just goes, wow, that's perfect.
- [30:40]
Charlie
And I love that it comes last.
- [30:41]
Ben Pentreath
You know, and it's the last thing to put in. But one of my kind of rules, it's very, very hard to. If you're decorating, it's very hard to fight a really bad sofa. You've got the wrong sofa.
- [30:58]
Charlie
That's a great one, actually. It's so true.
- [31:01]
Ben Pentreath
But years and years ago, I had a rental flat, actually my first rental flat in New York. And it was in a funny little top floor flat of a really beautiful little old, very decrepit townhouse in bank street in the Village. And it came with some slightly odd furniture. One of the bits of furniture which I couldn't do anything about was this massive kind of which was my landlord's sofa. And it was this huge kind of brown leather sofa. You know, I painted the walls. You know what, it didn't matter what I covered it in. It didn't matter how many big kind of linen sheets I draped it in. If you sat on it, the sheet just immediately slid off and it sort of. There was this monster.
- [31:45]
Charlie
That's so funny.
- [31:46]
Ben Pentreath
When I left that flat and I moved into my new flat, it was like, gosh, that was one of the happiest things to leave behind. And I also think that, I mean kind of, kind of on the same basis, it is actually worth really buying if you can afford it. A really beautiful sofa from somebody who makes great sofas which are really well constructed and they look exactly the same as other ones, but really makes a difference over time. There's an amazing company in London called Howard Chairs.
- [32:16]
Charlie
I was going to say, do you. Yep, that was going to be my next question is, are you talking about Howard?
- [32:20]
Ben Pentreath
They, I mean, Howard. Howard. Soft sofas are famous the world over. You know, the antique Edwardian and Victorian Howard chairs and sofas sell at auction for a fortune. Now they're very, very collectible. But the wonderful thing is that the company is still in existence. It's still going. It's in a Little workshop about 20 minutes north from our office. And they don't have a formal showroom. Like you can't go in and try everything out. But if you go up there with the client, they're literally just letting you sit on other people's sofas to sort of work out what size, what cushion filling, what suits you. And every single client who I take up there, almost without fail, everyone realizes, wow, this is probably the most comfortable sofa I've ever actually sat on in my life.
- [33:03]
Charlie
I think the English country house has perfected the comfortable sofa also.
- [33:08]
Ben Pentreath
Stan, I do think we are quite good at sofas. There's a lot with terrible sofas.
- [33:13]
Charlie
We are, I feel like sofas and bar drinks tables. You guys have perfected that them.
- [33:20]
Ben Pentreath
Yes. We're not very good at sort of the fridge situation in the bar or you know, really cold drinks and stuff like that. Americans take the. Always take the prize there. So we're good at. We're very good at a good looking bar. Yeah, that's true.
- [33:36]
Charlie
What do you think is the best advice for designing interiors you've ever received?
- [33:41]
Ben Pentreath
I can tell you the funniest piece of advice.
- [33:43]
Charlie
Please do.
- [33:45]
Ben Pentreath
Not necessarily the same as the best. It's not quite the same as the best. I once interviewed Robert Keim. I'm sure you know about Robert Keim. He was one of the great decorators. He had written an amazing book which is well worth having on your bookshelves if listeners don't have it. Explains a lot of his philosophy and projects. And when that book came out, I was asked to go and interview him by the Financial Times newspaper, which was great. It was lovely commission. I went to his apartment and we sat there for an hour or a couple of hours like this and just chatted through and all the rest of it and we went through various rules and all those sort of questions and tell me about your life, blah, blah, blah. At the end, you know, my little kind of question is like, what's the key ingredient in every Robert Keim interior. And he says, oh, with that, literally without missing a beat, he just said, a television on show.
- [34:36]
Charlie
Stop.
- [34:37]
Ben Pentreath
And what that means, oh my God, for me is actually the most important design advice is have a sense of humor.
- [34:47]
Charlie
Yeah. And live in it and enjoy it.
- [34:49]
Ben Pentreath
And live in it. You're not living in a museum. This is a place for you to live in.
- [34:54]
Charlie
Oh, God, I love that. That's hysterical. Literally the master of English interiors.
- [35:00]
Ben Pentreath
It was just such a great line and I was just like burst out laughing. And so did he and he was like, it's true. I love watching Kelly and I hate having to kind of like open up a kind of door or kind of like lift up a skirt or kind of move a curtain or pull something out of a cupboard. He said, I just want it on the table and I want to turn it on and watch it.
- [35:20]
Charlie
Oh, my God, I love it. First of all, I love the honesty. And it's true.
- [35:25]
Ben Pentreath
So what actually that least is kind of like, don't hobble yourself into something that isn't comfortable. Like, it's your home. You're not designing a place for the benefit of other people. I mean, obviously one of the reasons why you design your home or decorate your home or whatever is that it does look nice and that if you have. If you've got your friends over or whatever, it feels coherent and, you know, it's a nice place to be or a nice place to have people to stay and that's all great. But actually at a fundamental level, that whole thing of, like, comfort and enjoyments and it's for you and it's not. It's not really for anyone else. Not really. Yeah, I think that's really important and it's not always something that comes through in design books and design manuals and stuff like that.
- [36:09]
Charlie
One personal question that we like to ask towards the end, what do you think your home says about you?
- [36:17]
Ben Pentreath
That's a tricky question because obviously, in a weird way, you know, our flat in London and our old house in Dorset and our new house in the north in Orkney, they've all got a different vibe and it's partly subconscious and it's partly self conscious, that difference. But if we just focus on, yeah, the beautiful house which we've just moved into, which, by the way, I always recommend to people, if at all possible, hot water if you can have a nice hot bath, nice hot shower if you've got electricity, if the roof doesn't leak, literally just move in, like. Yeah, maybe in our Case we took out the old carpets and we've just got floorboards now and rugs. You might need to do things like that because you don't really want to just kind of live with someone else's kind of 50 year old carpets. But if you just move in, no one is going to walk in there and go, oh my God, I really hate the kitchen you just picked because it's obviously not your kitchen. Right?
- [37:10]
Charlie
Yeah. And you can collect it over time too.
- [37:13]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah. It's the best single way of beginning to understand what a house is about Now. I feel that every building has its own energy. Always, even weirdly, you know, quite modern buildings actually, like straight out of the block. Modern buildings have got an energy. That energy of the building is going to combine with the energy of the clients. And if we're involved in some way or another, you know, we're part of the discussion as well. And every single. All of those ingredients come together in different ways. But the house in Scotland that we've just bought, I mean, I don't know what exactly it says about us, it probably says. But Charlie and I are completely crazy because we have moved to one of the most remote places you could possibly pick.
- [37:56]
Charlie
Oh my God, that's so relaxing.
- [37:59]
Ben Pentreath
You have to get flights and a ferry or two ferries and a flight to get there. Like, it is not easy. I'm going to have to completely restructure the way that I normally work because I would normally kind of work in London all week and then on a Thursday night or a Friday, I would head down to our house, Dorset, and the train and then I would spend all weekend kind of like down there and then I would head back up to London on Sunday night or Monday. And so it goes on. And now there is going to be a very different rhythm to my life because I can't spend a day traveling on a Friday and then another day traveling on a Monday. I get absolutely mad and get exhausted and hate airports. So I'm going to do a week off and I'm going to do a week band sort of thing.
- [38:39]
Charlie
It's going to be beautiful, but it.
- [38:41]
Ben Pentreath
Is the most beautiful house. And I think that, I mean, to be honest, it's one of those ones where it really does speak about Charlie and I and what we're into. It's got this incredible landscape. It's set in the most beautiful landscape. It's quite astonishing. I can't tell you the connection to the sea into nature and is intense. It's an environment where the weather will be Intense as well. Then Charlie is the most amazing gardener. Like, incredible. And We've got a 10 acre walled garden with this beautiful tall stone wall. And then in the middle of it is this perfect, slightly austere, slightly plain, perfect house. It's just perfect for us. I can't even tell you. Amazing how lucky we were. And it was one of those things where. And everyone was like, how did you find it? And it was like, this won't mean quite so much to you, but it's called rightmove and it's just like the website in the UK which all property is sold on. And I was like, I was on Right Move. Like, I was on, like everyone's on property websites the whole time. Like, everybody. If you scratch underneath the surface, everyone is spending their entire time on Right Move. Dreaming.
- [39:51]
Charlie
I know. It's like Zillow here. Everyone is just always on Zillow looking at things. It's like, it's, it's our way of daydreaming.
- [39:58]
Ben Pentreath
So it's sort of like better than dating apps. It's better than porn. It's just like we're all just on property apps the whole time and. But we were actually seriously house hunting. Like, we were really seriously house hunting. We had spent three years looking for. We knew that we, we knew that our time in our beautiful house in Dorset was gently coming to an end. There was no actual time pressure, but it was happening. And that's another whole story. And it would have to be another podcast. But so. And then literally from one tiny little image, I saw that house on a little kind of thumbnail photo and I was like, okay. And it had just gone on the market because I was obviously on Right Move every kind of 12 hours.
- [40:39]
Charlie
You were on Right Move at the right time and you got it later.
- [40:44]
Ben Pentreath
We had bought that house. It was just that quick. We went up, we got there on a, on a. We got there on a Friday, we walked in, we were like, this is completely perfect. It's literally the house we've been waiting for for the last four years. It was being sold by the most wonderful 90 year old woman. And the estate agent had said to us, just remember, you're not going for a house viewing, you're going for a job interview. She's not going to sell it to everyone.
- [41:11]
Charlie
Oh my God, I love that we.
- [41:12]
Ben Pentreath
Were the first people to go and look at it. We loved her. We loved the house. She obviously decided that she liked us enough to sell it to us. That was on a Saturday. On the following Monday we'd made an offer and on the Tuesday the offer was accepted. And in Scotland when you've. When you've done that, that's that you fought it. It's really beautiful. It was crazy.
- [41:35]
Charlie
Wow. I believe in, in kismet with homes. I think what's meant. I really believe with real estate like what's meant to be will be.
- [41:43]
Ben Pentreath
Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. There's an element of fate because it. There just is somehow I don't know what it is.
- [41:49]
Charlie
Yeah.
- [41:50]
Ben Pentreath
The spirit of our lives. Yeah.
- [41:51]
Charlie
Yeah. Well that's a beautiful way to end. I love that so much.
- [41:56]
Ben Pentreath
Lovely.
- [41:56]
Charlie
Again, I love that. I'm going to do our take 10 at the end which are. We have these 10 rapid fire questions that have absolutely nothing to do with design that we ask everyone. So what is your favorite hotel that.
- [42:13]
Ben Pentreath
I can answer for you. It's very hard to get to. It's fantastic. It's the Hotel Bellevue des Alps in the Swiss Alps in Switzerland.
- [42:23]
Charlie
Oh, gorgeous.
- [42:24]
Ben Pentreath
And it's an absolutely iconic old 19th century hotel still owned by the family who built it. And every year we go on a little ski trip with friends and every year the friends invite more friends and that's so fun. It's turning into a bit like one day we'll just kind of book out the whole hotel I think for a week. It'll be horrific.
- [42:43]
Charlie
You should. That would be so fun if one's.
- [42:46]
Ben Pentreath
Just looking for design hotels like just a puree simple design hotel. I don't know if you've ever stayed at Ethem in Stockholm.
- [42:54]
Charlie
So high on my list.
- [42:55]
Ben Pentreath
The only thing I would urge people to be cautious of when you go there is just be sure that you can afford to stay there.
- [43:03]
Charlie
I know it's absurd and it's also impossible to get a reservation too. But it's very high on my list of places I want to go. Favorite city which I don't know if you're going to like that one either.
- [43:13]
Ben Pentreath
I mean, yeah, there are lots and lots of beautiful cities. I love Siena, maybe Kirkwall in Orkney which is a tiny, small little town really. But it's got a cathedral so it's a city. Will become my new favorite city. But actually I love London. I absolutely love London. I love living in London. I love, I love, I love being back here. But I love New York. May still. I'm very successfully giving you multiple answers to a single question.
- [43:41]
Charlie
Well also it's unfair to ask a city planner what their favorite city is.
- [43:46]
Ben Pentreath
Let's face it. Edinburgh. Oh, my God, I don't even know what. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
- [43:52]
Charlie
Favorite design book.
- [43:54]
Ben Pentreath
Yes. That's easy. Okay, so it's Gibbs's Book of Architecture, written by James Gibbs, who was an English classical architect in the 1720s. Still in print. Easy to buy a copy secondhand. I think there are newly printed copies. And he was a fantastic classical architect. And it was his very practical guide to how to do classical architecture. And the really beautiful thing about it is it was designed to be used by people who didn't know how to read because it was designed for builders and carpenters and crafters in early 18th century England how to do classical design. And very few of those people had been taught how to read. And it's an incredibly visual book and it is still the single clearest book on how to. How to draw and design classical mouldings, proportions, columns, you name it. It is incredible.
- [45:00]
Charlie
Oh, wow.
- [45:01]
Ben Pentreath
I'm gonna have to get it more incredible. I mean, obviously there's Palladio's Four Books of Architecture again, Isn't that amazing? Built, written in the 1560s, still in print, you know, isn't that incredible?
- [45:12]
Charlie
Yes, it is.
- [45:13]
Ben Pentreath
But then I think if we're talking about. I think your real question might be if we were talking about decoration books, you know, kind of like glossy color printed decoration books, which is my single favorite. I don't know if I could pick a single favorite, but in the 1960s, English house and Garden magazine published a brilliant series of books which are very easily available on secondhand. Bookmarket.
- [45:42]
Charlie
I have some. I've gotten them on thrift books for like $4. They're great.
- [45:47]
Ben Pentreath
Exactly. They're literally three or four dollars. The house and Garden Book of Country Cottages. The House and Garden Book of Rooms. The House and Garden Book of, like, Holiday Homes. I can't remember what they all are.
- [45:56]
Charlie
They're amazing.
- [45:57]
Ben Pentreath
They are fantastic and so full of inspiration. And some of those interiors that they show are still truly fresh and contemporary. And you're like, wow. These were literally printed, published in the 1960s.
- [46:15]
Charlie
Yeah. The photography today. Yes, Those are amazing.
- [46:19]
Ben Pentreath
And then a final one, which I put. I know that I'm doing exactly the same thing, but obviously I think about brilliant book Living in Vogue by Patrick Kinmont. And I'm sort of.
- [46:32]
Charlie
I don't know that one. I'm going to look it up, but.
- [46:34]
Ben Pentreath
I did a blog about that years and years ago and I was like, oh, my God, this is possibly the best decoration book of all time. Living in Vogue by Judy Britton and Patrick Kinmont.
- [46:44]
Charlie
I love asking this question because I always get some really great random, esoteric answers.
- [46:49]
Ben Pentreath
It's actually quite hard to buy now on the Internet. And I can't help wondering if my blog was responsible.
- [46:55]
Charlie
I'm sure it was and we can. We're gonna link all of these in the show notes too so people can find them.
- [47:01]
Ben Pentreath
And I have a feeling just looking at the COVID it has got the most terrible cover. And I have a feeling that I called my blog don't judge a book by its cover.
- [47:13]
Charlie
I love that. I know some of the older books, they're not like the exteriors aren't. They don't really fully convey how wonderful they are on the inside.
- [47:23]
Ben Pentreath
Yes. I wrote this blog in 2012. What year are we now? We're 2024. I'll send you a link and we.
- [47:30]
Charlie
Can put it in the show notes.
- [47:31]
Ben Pentreath
You have Living in Vogue with the enigmatic pencil written note on the back of an old postcard that arrived from my friend Ruth Gilding. If not, you will like it. And that starts it. It's a really, really, really good interiors book. It pretty much sums up everything we all mind about. Yeah.
- [47:53]
Charlie
Oh my God, I can't wait to read it. Thank you so much. That's such a great one. I love it.
- [47:58]
Ben Pentreath
And if you look back to my blog on which is on the pen, Treason hall, my shop website, you'll find it very easily. And it's got some taste of photographs.
- [48:07]
Charlie
Amazing. I can't wait.
- [48:09]
Ben Pentreath
And I can see five or six copies available for sale online. We'll see how many there are once, once your podcast is gone.
- [48:14]
Charlie
Oh my God, I hope, I hope I get to snag one before someone buys all of them.
- [48:18]
Ben Pentreath
Yes, yeah, exactly. But yeah, get it while stock's lost.
- [48:24]
Charlie
Well, Ben, thank you so, so, so much for coming on. This was such a delight and a treat. Same. I had so much fun.
- [48:32]
Ben Pentreath
See you in New York.
- [48:33]
Charlie
Yes, I can't wait. I can't wait to see you.
- [48:36]
Ben Pentreath
Fantastic.
- [48:37]
Arielle Ogan
That's a wrap for this week's episode of Talkshop. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with more thoughtful discussions and amazing guests. Follow us on Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube so you never miss an episode. And of course, follow me, Ariel Oaken. See you next week.