Homepage - Bible of British Taste

Latest Posts

Why we loved Laura Ashley, all over again.

Everyone helped with everything, loading the delivery vans with garments, then piling into the pub - the Aleppo Arms - at the end of a big production run. There were staff football matches with factory girls playing shop girls and the w...

February 7th, 2021

6 Comments

Bridie Hall 'At Home.'

Bridie was sent to England by a family friend, the pop musician Alanna Currie who had made the same journey of discovery herself in 1977. Bridie's first job was in the tiny branch of the parfumier Penhaligon in Brook Street - 'I never got...

December 27th, 2020

14 Comments

Welcome to the store

Write a short welcome message here

Shop by Category

New In

Fan Favorites

On Sale

Best Sellers

bibleofbritishtaste on Instagram

bibleofbritishtaste

Yo ho! Glorious Wardour Castle @jasperconran @the

Yo ho!
Glorious Wardour Castle @jasperconran @theworldofinteriors @christiesinc
Interview by @jasperconran
Text by @bibleofbritishtaste
Pictures by @simonuptonphotos

More blue kitchens? No.1 is the true Cornish blue

More blue kitchens? No.1 is the true Cornish blue someone was asking about on the last post, 2,3,4 are the fair skies blue chosen by Peter Hone, who enjoys teasing visitors that he’s dying to ‘modernise,’ 5 and 6 are Elizabeth Le Grice’s sugar-bag blue China dresser in the kitchen corridor @trereifehouse -and - finally - @rosbyamshaw who chooses a subfusc shade to display her bright blue Spode in her Devon kitchen

@benpentreathstudio says that blue kitchens are on

@benpentreathstudio says that blue kitchens are on trend and they certainly are very nice: here’s a mixed assortment of elderly blue kitchens from the ocean-deep archives of the bibleofbritishtaste.com... these come in all shades from ‘baby’ to cloud and sea shades to the richer ‘Cornish’ blue beloved of the Lamorna artists colony and still found in the cottages round about there. Not individually captioned but I will if you want?

Oh crumbs. We’re going to be confined to our coc

Oh crumbs. We’re going to be confined to our cocoons until Spring is fairly Sprung. So here are a final few bedrooms from the hinterland beyond interior design - featuring 3 artist’s households, one writer’s and a few civilians’. Nothing intimidating. No.1 is master-plaster-caster Peter Hone’s daybed. No’s 2, 3 and 4 are a bevy of bedrooms belonging to that master of the paintbrush Alan Dodd; 5 was somewhere near Primrose Hill, 6. and 7. feature the super-soothing qualities of Blooms-berry: pale linen bedcovers with DIY paintings, furniture, lampshades and curtains - style tip ! - that chrome yellow, that maroon-purple piping - @charlestontrust (thank you). No. 8, a little back bedroom at The Chantry, home of the great C20th novelist Anthony Powell, no. 9 my favourite, a fuss-free house near Bath, no. 10. a very comfortable Dorset country house family bedroom with layering: you could try this at home?

Which Brilliant British Brand links all these imag

A kind present sent on from Cath Kidston @cathkids

A kind present sent on from Cath Kidston @cathkidstonpadgham - this c.1970 photograph showing the simply decorated bathroom of Virginia, Lady Sykes - ( mother to ace photographer Christopher Simon Sykes @crykes and sibs) - at Sledmere House, wallpaper ( the inspiration for @cathkidstonpadgham ’s first design collection) , cork floor tiles, many a perfectly laundered white linen hand towel and a bit of something sprigged stuck onto the bath panels. Splosh.

Bathrooms ! A few late runners - nos. 1 and 2 are

Bathrooms ! A few late runners - nos. 1 and 2 are @charlestontrust : Clive Bell’s cooking-apple-green one, another nifty use of lap board in place of boring old tiles ( but he wouldn’t share altho’ there was only one other bath in the house ), no.3 is pure sub-marine jollity chez @cathkidstonpadgham , no. 4 is brilliant Richard and Patricia Hewlings at ‘Big Old house’ in the Fens (more green), 5 & 6, Master-Plaster-Caster Peter Hone’s gothick laundry cupboard and his print room-bathroom basin, no.7, serenity with a Robert’s radio @mccormickcharlie & @benpentreath ‘s Old Parsonage, no. 8, @isabelbannerman ‘ secluded lavatory at the end of a long spine corridor at Trematon Castle, no.9 is in another league altogether @gavin1966 ... and finally... an insouciant little bathroom in a house near Bath. I think that’s probably enough. Night night!

The Best of British Bathrooms have turned out - in

The Best of British Bathrooms have turned out - in fact- to be Scottish ones: no’s 1, 2 & 9 all taken at genius artist-creator and author @domenicamoregordon ‘s old family house outside Edinburgh - no. 1 the simple pine-plank panelled ablutions belonging to her mother (brilliant alternative to tiles) and no. 2, a top floor guest bathroom with vintage wallpaper of a particular charm. BUT, no. 3 is the unique knitting-pattern-gallery cum Gents. curated and hung by @louiseguinness , no.4 is the exquisitely perfect mauvish-pink taste of @minhoggdesign founder-editor of @theworldofinteriors , no.5 is the invention of Solveig Stone @comptonmarbling who has an exceptionally good ‘eye,’ no.6 with an economical use of Delft tiles belongs to Alastair Langlands, no.7 is @alanpowers4978 , author, design historian and Master @artworkersguild , no. 8 is the bathroom of the great novelist Anthony Powell who wrote A Dance to the Music of Time but had a keen eye for wallpapers too, no. 9 is @domenicamoregordon ‘s beautiful toothmug and finally, no.10 shows one of the attic bathrooms @woltertonpark a couple of years ago as restoration of that great Norfolk country house was just beginning. That pink washbasin and splashback!

Here, if you want it, Bathtime Stories part 2 from

Here, if you want it, Bathtime Stories part 2 from the fathomless archives of @bibleofbritishtaste : first of all, the peerless perennial and trompe l’oeil painter Alan Dodd’s Suffolk bathroom and its blissful windowsill-shell grotto, second, Delft tiles @smedmorehouse thriftily used, third, art historian Tanya Harrod’s shell bricolage on an original hand blocked Peggy Angus wallpaper, fourth, architectural historian @will_palin - the handsome old house he restored in Spitalfields and the Swedish chair with hoof-feet we found at Kempton market years ago, fifth and sixth, Desmond’s bathroom @wivetonhall with his Ravilious Coronation tooth mug, seventh, @prussiacove where nothing old and beautiful is ever thrown away or replaced and lastly, fabulous Pampas grass and red paisley walls in a bathroom near Bath.
One more to go? On Sunday perhaps? To everyone who liked them, thanks, ever so x

Here’s the first of two sets of bathrooms, not s

Here’s the first of two sets of bathrooms, not style-guides or temples of tile-work and marble but more or less rooms with baths - some quite pretty and considered, others almost wholly utilitarian. I like baths with feet, cork-topped bath stools, white porcelain and coloured towels best so all these might be over-represented here. The first two belong to @emilynixonjewellery ‘s mother Delia Ash whose Keiler’s marmalade toothbrush mugs are an idea well worth nicking, 2nd is lovely @cathkidstonpadgham tinted poison-green with pine bath essence, 3rd is Bridget Elworthy @thelandgardeners who is super-good at stripes, 4th was the top floor bathroom at Malplaquet House @timknox1 & @todd_longstaffe_gowan a decade ago, 5th my favourite guest bathroom and @mccormickcharlie ‘s giant perlargonium at the Parsonage with @benpentreath , 6 is another of Bridget’s @thelandgardeners , 7 at medieval Shulbrede Priory decorated with stickers by their children years ago, 8 is trompe-l’oeil heaven by Hannerle Dehne, and finally, at @domenicamoregordon who has the nicest paintings and small finds collected over half a lifetime in the junk shops of Edinburgh’s diaspora

My friend the painter Rose Hilton kept this birthd

My friend the painter Rose Hilton kept this birthday gouache from her husband Roger Hilton over the bed and the green plastic Mosque alarm clock I’d given her on the bedside table, she had what the poet W.S. Graham once called, ‘the Beat style.’ The first time I called on Julia de Pauley @rapsondepauley in Bridport she was drying the sheets on her garden hedges in the sunshine and it looked so nice. No.3 is the big bed in the wing at Norfolk-Bloomsbury house @wivetonhall with a landscape by Roger Fry hanging next to it. Fourthly, the four-poster Julian and @isabelbannerman made up from bits of antique salvage when it was at Trematon Castle- it’s proved too tall for the rooms of their Somersetshire manor house; 5 is the spare bedroom where they used to put me up there with terrific views over Plymouth Sound. 6 is a dear little plain bedroom @wivetonhall and 7 is beyond splendid, a country house in a great deer park in Sussex. 8 is the childhood bedroom of artist-maker @domenicamoregordon as decorated for her by her artist father Harry, 9 is the stupendous bed of the decorator-artisan paint-effects specialist Hannerle Dehne in Holland Park. Last of all, @belindaeade ,was taken several years ago, I loved the insouciant way she decorated her children’s bedrooms back when they were little
PS - have loved reading everyone’s comments- thank you - it’s cheered me up

It’s been rather a S-L-O-W day here and bed - w

It’s been rather a S-L-O-W day here and bed - with a good book - is beckoning, so here are a few calmly comfortable ones belonging to other people to send you off - no.1 guest bedroom at Pink Cottage belonging to @a.prin.art & @danielpieckielonslowik where I’ve spent one or two very happy weekends under this covetable patchwork quilt, deep perfect peace @wivetonhall , down in Dorset in the (back then) chic deshabille of a teenage bedroom @rapsondepauley and the master bedroom of the two talented artists and makers who are her mother and father, dressing room-bedroom @belindaeade in Somerset, Grayson Perry hangs above the ravishingly beautiful bed belonging to artist and jeweller @romillysaumarezsmith2 , chaste twin divans @smedmorehouse and the little pink bedroom there with a fantastical Chinoiserie chimneypiece and what turned out to be a very hard mattress, C20th paintings and a Victorian brass bed at Malplaquet House when @todd_longstaffe_gowan & @timknox1 lived in that glorious place. Gd’night!

Load More… Follow on Instagram

© 2021 Bible of British Taste

web design by streeten