This was published 4 years ago
Using movie magic to give the personal touch to interiors
The name Kate Hume, for me, conjures up images of exquisite, organic, hand-blown glass pieces in intense jewel-like colours. Clearly, I had skipped the intervening years where she had developed a high-end interior design business working with clients from Moscow to London, from her base in Amsterdam.
A vignette from Kate Hume's French holiday home: pairing a bronze sculpture with a charcoal sketch, both by artist Tim Bickerton.
Each interior is a highly personalised expression of her client, and Hume’s way of working relies so heavily on this approach that she admits: “If we are working on a commercial property I sometimes even invent a client, so that I can have a mental conversation with this imaginary person.
“I think this comes from my years in the commercial film business, where we would try to portray a character by the environment we created for them.”
In her new coffee-table book Élan, she unravels the process of her colour-filled projects, layered with objects and art, fabrics and furniture, much of it custom designed. “I talk in the book about finding a porcelain plate at the Marché aux Puces [flea market] in Paris, and designing a whole house around it,” she says.
Pictured is a delightful vignette from the holiday house in the south-west of France that she shares with her collaborator and husband Frans van der Heijden, who was also the book’s photographer. The play on the 3D bronze sculpture of the bird by artist friend Tim Bickerton is paired with a charcoal sketch, a gift from the same artist.
“I love green of all shades,” Hume says. “The chair was custom-made in that colour at Bonacina in Italy many years ago.”
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