Foolish is the Londoner who takes on a classic late
Victorian house with all the trimmings, and tries to
tamper with the character. When faced with decorating
the drawing room of the five-storey house he bought in
Earls Court three years ago, Jonathan Ross gazed at
the elaborate mouldings on the high, dark brown
ceilings, and at the piped-icing cornices, and winced.
As an art connoisseur and gallery owner, he
particularly objected to the Adams plasterwork that
dictated precisely where he should hang his pictures,
and what size they should be. There was also a gilded,
lacquered wood pelmet running around the top of the
bay window that was bizarrely inset with cameos,
making the room even fussier. "The cameos are of Marie
Antoinette, but why she should be the patron saint of
this house I don't know," says Ross, bemused.
Eventually, however, he made the only reasonable
decision: to keep everything intact. "I realised it's
rather special to have all that detail, and decided
from that point to keep the spirit of the house as
much as possible." Instead of emulating the
Victorians' taste in dour furnishings, however, Ross
had the room painted shades of cream and the floor
covered with neutral sisal; his wife, painter and
sculptor Camilla Shivarg, had the wit to buy endless
bolts of shimmery fabric from Berwick Street Market to
hang in iridescent panels from the extraordinary
pelmet. "When you need sixteen metres of fabric to
cover windows the size we have," she says shrewdly,
"you don't buy material that costs £90 a metre." The
couple spent one day on independent rummages for
glittering fabric, and came back laden with remnants
that were thoughtfully pieced together into many
cushions of gilded Byzantine hues, a worthy match to
the ancient Persian wedding gown draped over the
television set. Now it is Ross's antique and Oriental
mother-of-pearl furniture, Shivarg's sensual
sculptures and those rich, sumptuous fabrics -
despite their lowly provenance - that truly draw the
eye into the room.
Making the five-storey house habitable took one and a half
years' commited work from builders and owners alike.
"When I walked in for the first time I couldn't
believe the scale of it," recalls Ross. "I kept going
up the staircase, seeing all those rooms, until I felt
dizzy. I knew it would be a huge undertaking, but it
gave us the possibility of doing all the things we'd
dreamed of; Camilla could have a studio, and I could
run a gallery which I'd always wanted to, but never
had the nerve to."
In fact there was room for two galleries, one clean,
contemporary space in the basement which is completely
white; the other on the ground floor, overlooking the
street, where strangers have been known to ring the
doorbell and ask the name of the rich red paint with
which the couple chose to paint the walls. "It is in
fact an old-fashioned art gallery red, which works
brilliantly with all kinds of art, abstracts as well
as portraits, and is also perfect for the times when
the room doubles as our dining room," explains Ross.
The parquet floor is new, because the original only
covered the edges of the room, leaving floorboards in
the centre. "Apparently a favourite trick of the
Victorians was to put down a carpet in the middle, and
not waste expensive parquet where it couldn't be
seen."
Ross was inevitably faced with features that were not
Victorian, and did not deserve the respect accorded to
the drawing room. Despite the curiosity value of the
swirly brown circa 1960 Cyril Lord carpet in the hall
that the previous owner had told them they could keep,
Ross pulled it up, after keeping it for a year and a
half as a protective covering from paint and plaster.
It revealed more classic Victoriana: encaustic tiling
of an unusual blue, cream and terracotta design in
perfect condition that now runs right through to the
kitchen and Amdega conservatory that serves as
breakfast room. Another welcoming sight in the large
hall are the deep yellow walls - grey on the anaglypta
below the dado rail - that grow increasingly lighter
as they reach to the top of the house. "I liked the
idea of a strong, welcoming yellow as you walk in,
which grew lighter and brighter as you ascended the
staircase," says Ross.
The house is full of such effective touches. On the
second floor, by the main bedroom that is lined in
exquisite Chinoiserie wallpaper (looks antique, take a
bow Laura Ashley), is the dressing room. The built-in
floor to ceiling cupboards are MDF but artfully
painted to look like glossy veined walnut wood, and,
inset with etched glass panels and gathered gauzy
fabric, they could be part of a 19th century Russian
railway carriage. The opulent picture is underscored
with tasselled curtains of gold silk, foraged from
another trip to Berwick Street Market, and a military
tunic set with badges that celebrates Ross's early
fondness for Peter Blake and pop art.
The segmented cream shelves on the first-floor landing
that form the library - a clever use of dead space -
are all lined with crimson paint, a device that Ross
pinched from the Duchess of Windsor, who lined her
bookcases in the same colour. From a brass pole, a
holographic mobile makes hypnotic viewing; Ross is
passionate about holograms and has an extensive
collection that is exhibited worldwide.
The bathroom is a triumph of the imagination. Behind
the shutters that screen off the hurly burly of the
Earl's Court Road - Ross says it's fun to sit in the
double tub and hear the roar of the traffic - is a
thrilling room of Etruscan red that could hold its own
exhibition and never fail to draw the crowds. Although
the enduring image is of marbled grandeur, the marble
is faux and the floor is lino; the shower is lined
with factory-produced mosaic chips. A large terracotta
urn adds to the Pompeian splendour, while artefacts of
lost civilisations above the real marble fireplace are
an irreverent mix of fossils and fakery. On the
opposite side of the room is Ross's cabinet of
curiosities, a display case of shells and skulls and
old postcards, batman effigies and butterflies,
reflecting his love of home-made museums. "When I was
a boy I had a museum and always wanted to invite
people up to look at it. That's one of the reasons I
wanted a gallery in my home, because it's rather like
having the grown-ups round to look at your
collection."

Reproduced with permission. © Evening Standard.

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