New-season homewares: Game of Thrones, medieval legends and ancient artefacts inspire bold, new interiors looks

Ancient artefacts — and even medieval Game of Thrones — inspire the latest look for your home.
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Dominic Lutyens9 November 2017

A growing band of designers are delving into ancient Greek, Roman and Norse mythology, while creatives with fertile imaginations are dreaming up mythological characters of their own.

There have been revivals of classical motifs through the ages, including the postmodernist architecture of the Seventies and the neo-expressionist art movement of the Eighties, whose members — including Francesco Clemente and Mimmo Paladino — favoured primitive, mythological imagery.

Designers of the Eighties, such as Timney Fowler, also filled their work with Greek and Roman motifs from pillars and pediments to statues of emperors and gods.

One difference between that decade’s revival and the current one is that designers today are creating objects highlighting the similarity between the ancient world’s simple, functional vessels and our own modern, streamlined homeware.

Typifying this approach is the Delta collection co-created by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma, which references ancient Roman vessels. The Italian design duo scoured Roman archaeological sites and museums for inspiration, taking photos and notes that formed the basis of their designs.

They were struck by Imperial Rome’s “more mundane” objects, and their Acquedotto water jug and vinegar dispenser in clay red, black or off-white emulate these age-old pots’ earthy colours and stripped-down shapes.

£423: Titus con Manici urn by Jaime Hayón for Paola C 

Spanish designer Jaime Hayón’s pared-down New Roman tableware for Italian brand Paola C also looks to ancient Roman vessels but uses more opulent materials. Its glossy black ceramic Titus vase, which nods to the amphorae Romans used to store wine, sits on a brushed brass base.

Similarly, Hayón’s metal Colosseum bowl rests on a copper or brushed silver-plated base featuring arches mimicking the famous amphitheatre. He says the collection is “inspired by vessels of the Roman Empire but transforms antique references into a celebration of contemporary craft”.

£345: square green Urn Découpage tray by Bridie Hall for Pentreath & Hall 

Pentreath & Hall has given a modern twist to the ancient Greek figure vase, with trays incorporating black-and-white découpage images of urns set against punchier, contemporary hues of ruby red or moss green. The trays evoke the 18th-century revival of classical Greece and Rome — the first wave of neoclassicism — promoted by artists and designers returning from the Grand Tour.

Price on request: Owl and Deer figures by Lena Peters, stylised versions of Roman-era artefacts found in 2015 

The work of ceramicist Lena Peters reinterprets the imagery of these ancient cultures in a more personal way. Her stylised animal-shaped objects are based on real objects found in 2015 in a settlement dating from the Roman occupation of Britain near Hadrian’s Wall.

Her project, Secrets of the Hidden North, was exhibited recently at the British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent.

Helen M Strevens, founder of HMS Studio, says her passion for classical motifs stems from studying the history of architecture. Her Roman Graffiti plates and jewel-bright taffeta cushions, stocked by Jonathan Charles, bear linear images of slightly comic, swaggering gods, satyrs and mermen.

One designer giving free rein to her imagination is Jennifer Shorto. Her Cadre Noir wallpaper mingles Op Art-inspired elements, Mexican totemic structures and horses. She was inspired by 20th-century Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico’s melancholy urban scenes but depicted the horses in “Smurf blue” to inject humour.

£38: Forest Jig cushion by Ellie Curtis for St Jude’s 

Ellie Curtis’s Forest Jig fabric pictures imaginary, long-snouted creatures dancing deliriously, as if performing an ancient ritual.

And the sponge-like mind of designer Emma Shipley — whose silk cushions teem with phoenixes and dragons — has soaked up such wide-ranging influences as “medieval legends, Norse myths, Beowulf, Tolkien’s Middle Earth and even Game of Thrones”.