We always anticipate the latest addition of House & Garden, even more so this month as Henry, who has worked with us for over ten years has his beautiful home featured. Alongside working everyday on the selling with Charlotte and Tom, Henry’s domain is arranging the showroom with the constant change of antiques, lanterns and fireplaces. This role reveals his pure talent in interior decoration and the feature on his home highlights this further.
We share a passion for the English Country house – the aesthetic of Jamb and he has the same obsessive nature as myself with his eye for detail. I spent the morning with Henry as he shared his favourite objects with me – never a hardship as Henry is one of the funniest people I know.
‘Seascape painting by R. Barraud’.
This is one of the first things I bought when I started working in London. I found it in a junk shop (although it sounds smarter if I say small gallery!) I loved it but what I really loved was that I could actually afford it. My mother and I both share a love for seascapes but years later I read an article by a psychologist who wrote that those with a deep love for sea depictions also to have a deep fear of the sea which is actually true in our case.
‘Bookcase of Encyclopaedias, Books and Wooden Eggs.’
I went to Cornwall one weekend with a group of friends and saw these Encyclopaedias in a charity shop, the ticket attached to the four books said £40. I bought them and as I paid, the woman said she would go and fetch the rest – there were actually forty in the collection! Everyone recalls that journey back to London with books piled on top of their laps as high as the car itself and squeezed into every corner and crevice!
‘The bowl of wooden eggs which sits in the middle of the bookcase.’ As I child I kept chickens and a friend once gave me a wooden egg that came from David Linley and it became a prized possession. One year for my birthday friends were asking my wife Sophie what I would like. Knowing how much I liked the wooden egg and knowing Linley had a collection of them in different woods, she asked every person coming to dinner to bring one so I now have a collection of twenty-five all in different woods.
‘Caucasian Soumakh Rug’
I have been waiting for the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle in my sitting room – to find the perfect Rug to complete the room. Joshua Lumley came to the rescue! It is a Caucasian Soumakh – I absolutely love the shapes and the colours and the texture.
‘Jamb Small Original Globe lantern’
The Jamb Original Globe Lantern is the first piece I got when I started working at Jamb. Even though we are constantly adding new, beautiful lights to our collection, I always return to my favourite, the Original Globe.
Candle sconce made from a 19th Century Ecclesiastical European panel.
This is one of a pair of Ecclesiastical European panels that I bought from the lovely Emma Leschallas in Tetbury. There was someone else looking at them in the shop and she said, ‘They are lovely but I just don’t know what I would do with them?!’ and I thought, please don’t buy them, because I know exactly what I’d do! Luckily she didn’t and I bought them and adapted them into a pair of candle sconces.
‘Little Indian Pots’
I bought these with my wife Sophie when we were together in Rajasthan, India. We are both obsessed with India, so much so, we actually tried to work out how we could move and live there for a bit. We found this amazing house in Delhi which we thought ideal for us and assumed it would be worth about £100,000 but it turned out to be on the market for $6 million ( a little out of our budget!) I would move there tomorrow if I could. Maybe one day but for now London is our home.