WORDS BY GEORGINA LUCAS
“It’s in my head,” says Edward Bulmer, referring to the intricate hand-painted sketch he holds, he pauses, smiling, “– but my head has been a gradual process of acquisition.” The sketch is of a bedroom, created exclusively for SALON. One of the UK’s leading architectural historians and interior designers, Bulmer’s deft eye and encyclopaedic knowledge are responsible for the thoughtful restoration of more than 50 English country houses, over a career that has spanned three decades. Suffice to say, his is not your average head.
We’re meeting SALON’s latest collaborator at the new Edward Bulmer Natural Paint store and showroom, a handsome Regency townhouse in the heart of Pimlico Road’s design hub (complete with top floor bathroom with freestanding cast iron bath that we’re dispatched to admire shortly after arriving). Powdered pigments line one shelf, labelled by hand in Bulmer’s elegant cursive, the primary ingredients for the paints which make up his eponymous, entirely natural, brand. Even on the dreary October morning, light dances around the space, courtesy of his nuanced, finely-honed tones.
The breadth of Bulmer’s knowledge and experience make defining his occupation difficult – his CV runs the gamut from interior designer, architectural historian, entrepreneur, picture restorer to organic farmer and charity chair. The word polymath can be overused, here it is absolutely fitting. Beneath Bulmer’s erudite, serene exterior, beats the heart of an activist, passionately committed to sustainability – “the point of sustainability?” he asks, “it's to survive as a species, that's all – we’re in a place that humans have never, ever been in”. The paint is a “tiny contribution – my version of agency for change,” along with a commitment to specifying sustainable materials and antique furniture in his interior design projects and his own home, which he uses as a ‘laboratory’ for his ideas.
For SALON, he’s chosen a bedroom, “because it's something we all have to do,” – sleep, I presume he means, though one can’t help but wonder where he finds the time. And Georgian, “because it’s still the dream,” he says, with a smile. “But I stopped myself from doing a nice, polite Georgian mahogany bed, and thought - how nice to have a brass bed instead, and a painted brass bed, looking at your Cornish Bed Company”. In compiling the scheme, Bulmer has followed the same codes he applies to Britain’s most impressive period houses.
Firstly, harmony underpins everything – “I've got bare wooden floorboards here, so that's setting up my tonality, and a big lump of mahogany courtesy of Lorfords Antiques – another determinant,” he explains – “I'm trying to get a balance, a contract between how the fixtures of the room, the architecture of the room, relates to those moveable furnishings that you bring in, and how that dialogue helps one to the other.” Which is where SALON comes in, a stable of carefully curated brands and makers, each celebrating true craft, slow design, “they're a lot like me,” he says, “all channelling long design traditions, and tweaking them enough so that they're modern and relevant and fresh and fun” – case in point, the upholstered chair Bulmer created for Lorfords Contemporary, with a twist – painted legs.
Unsurprisingly, given Bulmer’s “grammar” is colour, the palette is a key tenet of the space, and that all important balance. Consider “the pigments that help you create that tonal connection”, he says, here it’s “bluey green, with greeny blue.” Pattern is added via sumptuous, trimmed bed dressings and traditionally crafted curtains which hark back to times gone by – “the form of drapery in the past was such an enormous subject, and how that linked to the architecture” he says, “so that's very central to our approach to interior design.” Along with a sizeable rug from Shame Studios – “comfort underfoot is really important,” he explains, “but that sense of comfort is also a visual stimulus – if you have a rug furnishing the floor, which is after all a sixth of your room, I think it goes a long way to saying this is a comfortable welcoming room.”
“It’s like music,” says Bulmer of the details that finish a scheme, “gilt frames, brass poles, brass fenders, little incidents”. For him, the composition seems to come effortlessly – a little of this, a little of that, natural alchemy. The sketch, he explains, “gives you a vision,” his vision. “Turn[ing] that into reality, that's what [SALON’s] process is brilliantly unpicking, the translation. It's doing everything I would do in delivering a project from the initial stages, the vision, to the completed whole that you can move into” – you’ll find me curled by the Regt Delft tiled fireplace.