Explore This Charming Victorian Farmhouse in the English Countryside
Rita Konig, daughter of the pioneering female decorator Nina Campbell, grew up amid lush and comfortable interiors and observed firsthand the hard work that goes into creating them. But while Konig clearly learned the nuts and bolts of design from an impeccable source, from the moment she founded her interior design firm two decades ago, she forged her own distinctive style: a bit quirky, highly livable, and, most of all, happy.
Based in London, Konig has built her thriving practice with both residential and commercial projects that take her all over the world; she recently decorated the interiors of the buzzy Hotel 850 in West Hollywood (see ELLE Decor March 2019). If she has earned a wider following along the way, it is in part because she communicates her taste so well: both through her Instagram account (59,000 followers and growing) and in the columns she has penned for such publications as British Vogue, Domino, and The Wall Street Journal. In all of them, she comes across as an über-stylish, highly authoritative friend.
In recent months, said followers have been able to join Konig as she and her husband, biographer Philip Eade, have renovated North Farm, their farmhouse in County Durham in northeast England. “We wanted to be sure this felt like a real, lovely country house,” she says. “And completely different than a city home.”
Konig has offered her fans a window into the challenges of renovating a historic home on a working farm-one that has seven bedrooms and five baths-and transforming it into a comfortable family home for the couple and their five-year-old daughter, Margot. The rambling, “mostly Victorian” golden stone structure is surrounded by rolling pastures and has been in Eade’s family for generations. The property even includes an archaeological discovery: An entire medieval village is buried here. “I had to make Pinterest boards to show Philip that I wasn’t going to do anything overly elaborate or too decorated,” Konig says.
While the result is indeed a dream of an English country getaway, it’s also quintessentially Konig: a mixture of high style with unfussy restraint, touches of whimsy, classic English references, and plenty of color. In the spirit of the property, Konig installed a traditional-style kitchen by Plain English and a large and practical stone-floored mudroom to stand up to plenty of wet boots.
The interiors are rustic but polished. Of the sage-walled sitting room, with its eclectic mix of geometrics and florals, Konig says: “I wanted it to be a bit mismatched, with the feeling that something came together naturally. At a certain point, I did wonder, Have I gone too far?”
The small library-which Konig calls the TV room-was less ad hoc. “The concept was to fit as many people as comfortably possible to watch a movie or football game,” she says. “I really liked the combination of the delicate, small-print wallpaper with the more robust upholstery fabrics like corduroy, quilted cotton, wool, and velvet.”
There are certain things in the house that her fans will recognize instantly as Konig trademarks: bright crystal match strikes, vivid lacquered drinks trays, scalloped D. Porthault linens, and, of course, her signature blend of classic and modern patterns. Above all, though, it’s the feeling of comfort that pervades the house: the deep, down-filled sofas that invite curling up with a book; the tempting, crisp beds; the generous, weathered farmhouse table; and the pink-but not sugary-little girl’s dream that is Margot’s room. “At the end of the day,” Konig says, “we wanted a place where friends and family really like to be.”
This story originally appeared in the June 2019 issue of ELLE Decor.
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