#ANTIQUE LAMP WITH PAINTED SCREEN SHADE WINDOWS#

It concentrated his mind, as well as training his eye for quality. From that time, every object Robert bought had to make a profit. Halfway through his first year at the university, his mother arrived to say his stepfather had left home and there was no money. ‘By the time I was at Oxford, I was dealing in antiques properly,’ he says. ‘It was £8 at an auction in Peterborough.’ Though not precious, this is a rare thing, as Robert – a collector of coins from the age of five and a passionate historian – originally sold everything he bought and kept nothing. ‘One of the first things I bought,’ says Robert. The sitting space is further enclosed by a screen covered in chinoiserie paper. A pair of runners on either side of the room establish their own areas, with tables of display or cabinets of curiosities. This one defines the sitting area, containing within its borders a pair of armchairs on either side of the chimneypiece, with their attendant side tables and lamps, as well as a hexagonal oak library table used for informal meals. ‘I’ve had this rug for some 30 or 40 years,’ says Robert of the seventeenth-century Oushak rug in here, as he reiterates his design mantra, ‘Every room begins with the rug.’ He likes to use them to break up spaces in a large room. You could be in a grand country house until you look closely at the pictures hanging from the brass picture rails it is a very personal collection of quirky and surprising works from medieval art to an Eric Ravilious watercolour.

Turn right from the hall, following a path made by a nineteenth-century Turkish Kirsehir runner, and you reach the living room – the central room of three – through an arch. Your spirits lift as Robert opens the front door into the square hall and you spy straight ahead a large painting of dogs and horses, two English Turkey-work chairs and a beautiful arrangement of rugs and pictures on the side walls. Once their work was complete and the canvas bare, Robert arranged all his marvellous possessions in just one week: ‘Don’t ask me how I do it – I can’t explain.’

#ANTIQUE LAMP WITH PAINTED SCREEN SHADE WINDOWS#

Over eight months, his team of builders stripped down this high-ceilinged flat, previously a warren of oddly divided rooms, blocked windows and random corridors. It is evident that Robert ‘just has it’, too. She was, he says, someone who ‘just got it… just had it’, with a smile and a click of his fingers to illustrate her cleverness. This was the age he married his late, much missed wife, Helen Nicoll, author of the Meg and Mog children’s stories. ‘This is the first place I have had on my own since I was 23,’ he says.

The flat overlooks treetops and a church spire. Undeniably intriguing, the stone is the least beautiful of the many extraordinary treasures brought together here by owner Robert Kime, the antique dealer and interior decorator, whose clients include the Prince of Wales. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Antique lamp with painted screen shade