David Mlinaric: Harmony in Difference

 

Who could possibly be cool enough to design Mick Jagger’s houses? You guessed it: David Mlinaric. A recent lifetime achievement award hints that this is not David’s only accolade. We were lucky enough to be joined by David to mark the opening of our Pimlico Road shop the morning after he was acknowledged with House & Garden’s ultimate honour. This inspired a reflective mood in his conversation with Tom, as the room joined in to volley their own burning questions in David’s direction. Some wondered about his heritage projects, like Chatsworth or Spencer House; while others were curious about what it took to be escorted out of Annabel’s in the ‘60s (it was a sartorial faux pas, David insists). By the end we had a vibrant mental picture of David’s road through design, which continues to snake along, despite his being “retired”.

 

 

David and Tom first intersected in the ‘90s at Tom’s very first shop by Exmouth Market. David spotted a red table through the shop window, which opened the door to many more acquisitions over the quarter-century to follow. At first glance, one might consider Tom’s designs to be decidedly contemporary and David’s more traditional. Upon closer inspection, a more nuanced mixture of influences emerges. Tom’s furniture is informed by classical principles of design, like symmetry and simplicity. David’s interiors often take on a tastefully eclectic character, where a house with traditional bones and period details is punctuated by colourful, modern furniture and fixtures. Their styles dovetail beautifully, with many TF designs finding homes within David’s schemes.

 

 

David’s multifarious aesthetic sensibility is scaffolded by timelessly good taste. He can spot the same unifying thread of beauty in both the old and the new. For example, in the blue dining room of Waddesdon Manor, Jacob Rothschild’s estate in Buckinghamshire, is an Ingo Maurer pendant lamp that David spotted in New York. It was made just three years prior from shards of shattered porcelain and hangs next to 17th-century lamp stands and 18th-century panelling. The result is unexpectedly harmonious.

 

 

This open-minded curative approach is laid bare in David’s recent design for a family home in Chelsea. The house in question is one of the oldest in the neighbourhood, built in 1790 when the area was still largely rural. David remarks that it had “had its guts ripped out”, removing any interrelationship between rooms, as well as characterful details like mouldings. He set about bringing it back into one, cohesive piece, paying homage to its history but infusing a modern feel – giving it its mojo back. It’s neither entirely modern nor entirely traditional. This uncategorisable quality is arguably a hallmark of great design – marrying different aesthetics harmoniously by seeing past eras and styles and through to the fundamental beauty of an object.

 

 

David often starts with a focus on form. “The first thing to do is get the shell right.” Only once that’s established can the process of specifying decorative elements kick into gear. Much of the furniture that goes into projects like David’s recent Chelsea home has a sculptural quality, flirting with the label, “art furniture”. Contemporary, eye-catching photography and furniture coalesce to produce a unique ambiance within classically formed architecture. Tom’s Papillon Side Table, for example, sits amidst other modern pieces like a crisp scagliola coffee table by Francis Sultana.

 

 

Some of David’s projects are more overtly contemporary in style. Take his Flint House, for example. The strikingly sleek building sits on the grounds of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. It was commissioned by Jacob Rothschild with a view to raising the standard of contemporary architecture in the UK. The project is one of four contemporary buildings by various architects and designers commissioned for the estate over the past 30 years.

 

 

Jacob explains, “the idea is that the public will see Waddesdon and the new buildings as an architectural experience”. David worked on the project alongside Irish architect, Charlotte Skene Catling, who was inspired by her discovery that the site sat on a geological fault line of chalk and flint. He applied his usual philosophy: “the inside must be what the outside prepares you for; no velvets or silks here, but natural fabrics and warm colours that blend with the neutral shades of the flint and the meadows”.

 

 

There’s a sense of unity that comes from the intentional integration of pieces like a dining table designed by Jacob, which displays an artful arrangement of flint stones encased beneath the glass top. It’s details like this that, as intended, create a conversation between the land, the architectural exterior, and the decorative interior. The dining table is strategically placed in a visual thoroughfare, with the adjacent floor-length glass pane leading the eye outward across the building’s flint-encrusted exterior, which rises as stony, shale-like steps from the earth.

 

 

There’s a certain sense of scale and grandeur to the projects David has taken on under the umbrella of the design practice he co-founded, Mlinaric, Henry & Zervudachi. With offices in London, Paris, and New York, their body of work is far-reaching and high-flying. With clients like the National Gallery, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Eric Clapton on his CV, one might get the idea that David himself has a taste for the luxurious. The truth is, David prefers a certain understated modesty in his own spaces. As he puts it, “often the simplest things are easiest to like, in clothes, food, gardens and landscape, as well as in buildings”. David and his wife, Martha spend their time between Spargrove, their rustic home in Somerset, and their holiday home in Hvar, Croatia. He’s led by a vision of simplicity: turnkey, low-maintenance, and unfussy. Such is the prerogative of a man who’s been intimately immersed in every manner of decorative delight for over 60 remarkable years.

 

 

 

Text by Annabel Colterjohn