I was fortunate enough during last year’s Open House festival to attend a tour of The Stanley Picker House, a mid century modern marvel on a substantial private estate in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.

Commissioned in 1965 by Stanley Picker, a successful entrepreneur whose ventures in plastics and cosmetics had brought him considerable wealth, the house was designed and completed by architect Kenneth Wood (who had trained with Span) in 1968 as a dedicated home to showcase Picker’s art collection.

In 1976, Picker established a trust to conserve the house and its contents in perpetuity. Remarkably, the home has remained virtually untouched since its completion, with no additions and all of the original furniture intact. The preservation of the house has been aided by live-in caretakers and the trust’s policy of only allowing a maximum of 30 visitors to enter the house each year to preserve the integrity of both the structure and its artworks.

Photography of the interiors was also strictly prohibited. From the time that Picker lived in the house, he was fiercely protective over his privacy and his art collection, even going as far to stop Conran, who designed most of the furniture in the house, to use images of the house to promote his practice. The trust has therefore continued in this tradition – it is very difficult to interior shots of the house online (the ones that I did manage to find are in this blog entry) and any photos that you do see do not focus on the artwork, particularly the paintings.

Exterior

The house was built on a challenging, steep plot dotted with oak trees, providing natural framing for the building. From the outside, the front elevation of the house was unassuming and did not prepare me for the striking interior space and gardens that lay behind the main entrance.

The façade of the house and its inwards-facing layout was deliberately designed to be discreet, reflecting the social pressures of the time: Picker and his partner Paul Cavanagh had to maintain privacy in an era when homosexuality, though partially decriminalised in 1967, remained stigmatised.

Entrance

Stepping inside into the entrance hall, the hallway featured stained-glass windows crafted in the Daldevere technique, slabs set into resin within metal frames. Here, as throughout the house, the architecture was designed with specific artworks in mind: Terry Frost paintings and a Paul Mount sculpture mirrored the geometry and light of the vestibule while pieces by Dennis Mitchell, a studio assistant of Barbara Hepworth, sat alongside works by more established artists.

Upper level

Beyond the entrance hall was an upper landing area with a stunning elevated perspective over the double-height living area below. A large, striking painting of Christopher Gibb by Patrick Proctor, an artist unfavorably compared to David Hockney at the time, overlooked the galleried area. The landing area was widened at Picker’s request to fit walnut piano from his previous house as the piano was said to work best up here acoustically.

Also on the upper level was the library, featuring chocolate-brown hessian walls and a bespoke tropical laurel sideboard with a drop-leaf bureau and an integrated reel-to-reel tape deck, the best technology that could be bought at the time. The mid century modern furniture in the library and the rest of the house was selected by Terence Conran and represented the first domestic project by Conran Group, coinciding with introduction of the Habitat brand to the UK market and providing a testing ground for Habitat products. The mix of bespoke pieces by Conran, reissues of 1920s pieces and contemporary 1960s pieces were reportedly not to Picker’s taste as he preferred a chintzier style. In fact, anything that Conran didn’t select in the house (i.e. most of the art and knickknacks) were kind of chintzy – I wondered why someone with such chintzy taste would want such a cutting edge modernist home and was told that Picker had multiple other, more traditional homes and this one was built as something of a status symbol.

Living Spaces

Descending the stairs brought you into the main living room. Orange velour Conran sofas anchored the space, paired with theatre-style Castiglioni lamps and a large coffee table with fold-down panels. An enormous sliding-door entertainment unit housed a 4-channel stereo and portable 8-track player on which Picker played classical music and contemporary musical theatre scores.

The adjacent dining room served as an entertaining space for regular dinner parties, with guests including Danny La Rue and Lionel Blair. This space featured pendant lighting and reupholstered emerald green Mies van der Rohe chairs, tying the room’s rug and accessories together. Original glassware, linens, and ceramics were stored neatly in bespoke cupboards adorned with lithographs by Chagall, a nod to Picker’s Belarusian heritage.

Bedrooms and Private Spaces

The house accommodated two parallel sets of inhabitants: Picker and Cavanagh (who had been together for many years before moving into this house and lived here until they both died), and the family who looked after the house in the caretaker’s wing. Cavanagh’s bedroom, concealed behind a hidden door off the dining room to maintain privacy, was more functional than decorative, overlooking the garden without granting access. Due to the social attitudes of the time, the couple had to maintain pretence that Cavanagh was a lodger.

Picker’s own suite of rooms was more extravagant and consisted of a bedroom, bathroom and dressing room. The bedroom felt as if it was enveloped by the lush gardens with its dual-aspect windows, complemented by warm wood tones and a soft yellow and green colour scheme. The carpet in the adjoining dressing room was slightly sunken in to be flush with wooden floor of bedroom.

There was also a spare bedroom on the upper floor (in relation to which I could not find any images online!) which showcased a slightly bolder use of color: rose-colored walls, bright corduroy blue carpets and Habitat curtains. The Conran group also provided the bed linens, a Formica vanity unit and Marcel Breuer and Saarinen tables bought for purposes of putting art on them. Another Patrick Proctor painting of Ossie Clark and Christopher Gibb alongside Mt Fuji hung by above the bed.

Garden and gallery

The house opened onto a carefully designed garden, conceived in collaboration with landscape gardeners and Picker’s architectural team. While access from the main house was limited, the view through expansive glazing and sliding doors reinforced the house’s inward focus, bringing the natural beauty of the surroundings into the house.

A standalone gallery building was added in 1976 at Wood’s suggestion because the house was becoming too cluttered by Picker’s dense art collection. Here, Elizabeth Frink sculptures and a Rodin piece were displayed alongside modern paintings, reflecting Picker’s desire to juxtapose the famous and the unknown while avoiding pop art trends.

Photo sources for images of interior of Stanley Picker House:

https://www.iconichouses.org/houses/picker-house

https://www.iconichouses.org/news/ihc20-fiona-fisher-on-iconic-interiors

https://hilarywhiteinteriors.com/inspiration/mid-century-modern-magic-visiting-the-iconic-interiors-of-surreys-stanley-picker-house-and-the-homewood/

https://www.stanleypickergallery.org/about/stanley-picker-trust/