A Vintage Home Without the Hassle
20th February 2019
Last week we shared some of our all-time favourite kitchen inspiration on Instagram, the enviably cool homes of John Derian and Pedro da Costa Felgueiras and Astier de Villatte’s new Parisian digs too. Places with soul and character, the ultimate go-to for ideas on eclectic style and vintage decor. There’s a real art in creating interiors that feel as if they have never been touched, not only in the ability to layer different colours and styles, but also the talent, patience and persistence to be able to find such beautiful vintage pieces for your home.
We’ve all been there, you’ve traipsed around a local antique fair or spent hours scrolling through eBay and you find something that is so nearly perfect… but not quite. It’s the wrong size or colour or doesn’t actually work properly anymore!! It’s so frustrating. And it’s for exactly this reason that we decided to design a selection of our own deVOL products, handmade things full of charm and character that work like new – the look and feel of vintage, without the hassle of actually having to find the perfect vintage piece.
The Millhouse Refectory Table paired with our award-winning Bum Chairs and beautifully authentic Terracotta Tiles from Floors of Stone.
The latest addition to the collection is the Millhouse Refectory Table, this one was designed specifically for our new Millhouse showrooms. It feels so much like an antique farmhouse table, long and skinny with a rustic reclaimed pine top, but it can be made to a bespoke size, the apron and legs can be painted in your favourite Shaker colour and you can choose the hardware too. Here we’ve gone for our matt black bronze Boho handles. Each handle is individually cast by hand to create a truly unique aged look. The organic pitted texture is achieved using a technique called sand casting, all the tiny little holes were formed by sprinkling grains of sand inside the moulds in different quantities, meaning no two are ever alike!
deVOL Handcrafted Handles are available in seven unique living finishes that will change and age beautifully.
The tabletop is made from wide boards of reclaimed pine to complete the authentic, rustic look.
You may have read the story of our deVOL Aged Brass Taps before. We have always loved the vintage feel of brass and wanted to find taps that would work perfectly with our increasingly popular brass hardware. After a few regrettable eBay purchases, we decided to talk to our friends at Perrin & Rowe. We have been working with this wonderful English tapware company for years and years, and more often than not our customers choose their products, so it just made sense to team up with them to solve our tap conundrum.
The deVOL Aged Brass Ionian Tap made in collaboration with Perrin & Rowe.
It took a while to come up with the perfect aged brass finish based on the vintage designs that we loved but couldn’t find, something unique that is completely exclusive to deVOL. It’s a living finish so it will only get lovelier as time goes on, developing a subtle patina that makes it look as if it could have always been there. They were an instant hit. So much so, we’ve expanded the range to include an Ionian mixer, separate Mayan taps, a pot filler and an instant mini hot water tap too. It’s such a delight to see these good old fashioned taps being sent out to homes all over the world, I guess a lot of people struggled as much as we did to find a quality vintage tap!!
A pair of Aged Brass Mayan Taps set into a Carrara marble insert to prevent water damage.
The deVOL Pot Filler Tap – an old school kitchen gadget that makes cooking easier and more fun.
The Curiosity Cupboard is a piece that we came up with a couple of years ago, inspired by old museum display cabinets, we wanted to make something that was more akin to a vintage piece added at the end of a project, something that would work beautifully in a kitchen but equally as well in any other part of your home. We still love mixing antiques into our designs but it’s lovely to be able to incorporate a freestanding piece that you know will fit perfectly and that can be painted inside and out to match or contrast with your colour scheme.
A freestanding with bags of personality, the Curiosity Cupboard is a fun way of displaying your most loved things.
The latest incarnation of this truly versatile cupboard has exquisite chinoiserie backboards. Fabulous botanical designs hand-painted by our resident Decorative Artist, Rosie. We finish off these delicate paintings with a crackle glaze and dark wax, which gives an aged look. It has proved to be a lovely way of taking off the newness of the paint and adds the depth and authenticity that we really wanted this piece to have.
This cupboard is on its way to our New York showroom, finished with beautiful botanicals hand-painted by Rosie.
Of course, the Curiosity Cupboard doesn’t just have to be a place to display your most loved oddities. The Regent’s Park Cellar Bar included a bespoke version of the cupboard that was designed to hold 180 bottles of wine, with separate spaces for magnums and shelves for liqueurs and spirits too!! A vintage-esk piece to hold the best vintages… quite fitting really.
A bespoke Curiosity Cupboard has become the most beautiful wine storage solution, made to measure for this glamorous Regent’s Park Cellar Bar.
I couldn’t write this blog without mentioning our marble sinks. Old Italian Villas and Spanish Farmhouses fill my Pinterest inspiration boards, I love the crumbling glamour of Mediterranean homes, rooms that have been lived in and loved for generations. They are filled with luxurious natural materials like marble. People get so worried about having natural stone in their kitchens, but have you ever seen an antique marble-topped table and thought ‘well, that looks scruffy’ or dated or anything other than captivatingly beautiful. These sinks have a crisp honed finish, so they never look shiny and new. They will pick up etches with use and after a few weeks will settle into your home where it will hopefully stay for years and years to come.
deVOL Marble Sinks are a little luxury made to last a lifetime.
If you’re still on the hunt for something truly vintage, well, we can help you with that too! No need to sift through a jumble sale of tat that no one really wants, or enter into unbearably nerve-racking bidding wars – we’ve done all the hard work for you. Paul and Helen visit antique fairs all over the country to bring together a carefully considered collection of vintage items, from antique French armoires to chandeliers to chemist jars. If you come to Cotes Mill you can wander around our beautiful showrooms where these interesting and unusual pieces are intermingled with our handmade cupboards, and there’s an antique cellar full of hidden gems too. In London, we have a lovely collection of smaller items, most of which can be found in our St. John’s Square townhouse in Clerkenwell. You can also see a selection of our favourite and most recent finds on the ‘Antiques’ page of our website.
We offer a carefully curated selection of vintage items from all over the world.
The Millhouse Refectory Table by deVOL, prices start from £2,200.
deVOL Aged Brass Taps by Perrin & Rowe, prices start from £310.
The Curiosity Cupboard by deVOL, prices start from £1,800.
deVOL Marble Sinks, prices start from £2,160.
