Emily Todhunter has created a seamless blend of old and new in this extension to a Jersey farmhouse. Arabella Youens takes a look.
The owners of this farmhouse, set among rolling hills and with views to the sea, were keen for a larger kitchen, better suited to entertaining. Emily Todhunter, co-founder of Todhunter Earle, set about designing an extension that had the same atmosphere and feel of the existing house.
‘It’s something we specialise in as a studio: balancing new with old,’ explains Miss Todhunter. ‘We intentionally didn’t want there to be a significant visual difference when stepping into the new kitchen.’
Marrying the two spaces involved adding beams to the new room, albeit higher than those in the existing house. A second nod to the latter is the use of bead-and-butt boarding on the walls, which continues a theme established in other downstairs rooms.
‘We draw a line at pastiche, so the floors in the kitchen are a more contemporary contrast to the flagstones in the rest of the house. Our approach is to adapt houses to make them fit for today’s lifestyles.’
Greens and blues dominate the colour scheme. Picking up some of the hues from the garden beyond, the tiles behind the Aga are Maison Series in moss green from Craven Dunnill. The floral curtains are in Bannister Hall by Christopher Moore, who specialises in authentic copies of 18th- and 19th-century French and English designs.
‘It’s so important to balance the practical with a softer aesthetic in a kitchen,’ says Miss Todhunter. With this in mind, she lined the walls behind the kitchen table with Panama Ardoise by Abbott & Boyd, which lends a cosy feel. Above the fumed-oak island are Petworth lanterns in bronze from Vaughan.
Todhunter Earle (020–7349 9999; www.todhunterearle.com)
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