Recommended Supplier Brintons, which was awarded the Royal Warrant at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign in 1958, was involved in helping to transform the rooms in Kensington Palace…
Childhood home of Queen Victoria and home to young royals for over 300 years, Kensington Palace is now a building of two halves, with the parts open to the public cared for by Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity.
On May 24 1819 at Kensington Palace, Queen Victoria was born. On 24th May 2019, her 200th birthday, the home of her youth re-opened to visitors after a major makeover in the form of a new semi-permanent display called ‘Victoria: A Royal Childhood.’ As part of the work to recreate the rooms where Victoria grew up, Historic Royal Palaces curators carried out extensive research into the decorative schemes she would have known as a child.
Brintons worked with the curators at Historic Royal Places, to create bespoke period carpets for the rooms where Victoria was born and raised at Kensington Palace.
It started with a trip to Brintons archive, which holds patterns from as early as 1790, the curators worked with Brintons Archivist Yvonne Smith to select original hand painted designs from the Georgian era. Historic Royal Palaces required designs that were authentic to the period when Victoria would have lived in the Palace and so Brintons was an obvious choice for this very special project. Brintons Creative Designer Kay Jones subsequently worked on a detailed specification to prepare the designs for manufacture. To meet the demands of a busy location, a high performance Brintons axminster carpet with a complex wove and locked yarn that creates a strong, integrated three dimensional structure was selected.
“Taking the rooms back to their 1820s decorative scheme was crucial to Historic Royal Palaces’ ambition to give visitors a real sense of what life looked like at Kensington Palace for Princess Victoria,” said Caterina Berni, Interpretation Manager, Historic Royal Palaces. “Brintons’ archival patterned carpets were ideal to help recreate the style and feel of these regency interiors, and along with the curtain textiles, wallpapers and room colours, definitely surprise visitors who are not expecting such a feast of colour, texture and pattern.”
Brintons own one of the world’s largest commercial design archives and historical pattern libraries in the industry, restored and preserved by their dedicated Archivist. The archive library is a facility unique to Brintons and is an invaluable resource to designers, conservators, decorators and contractors worldwide.
Utopia Projects is one of our recommended suppliers. To keep up to date with their news, click here. And, if you are interested in becoming one of our recommended suppliers, please email Katy Phillips by clicking here.
Main image credit: Brintons
