Ruth Guilding

1 week ago | worldofinteriors.com | Ruth Guilding

Christopher Gibbs was born, and lived, with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. God had given him grace, beauty, an easy manner, high birth and inherited wealth, intelligence, charm and curiosity – and, beneath all this, a steely business acumen. Thanks to an adored twin sister, he knew what it was to be loved, and showed an affectionate warmth to others. From an early age he had begun collecting beautiful things as well as drawing beautiful people to him.

3 weeks ago | worldofinteriors.com | Ruth Guilding |James McDonald |James Mcdonald

It took three years to mend Ashington Manor. Friends of the landscape designers Isabel and Julian Bannerman looked on with bated breath, willing things to go well, longing for bedroom floors to be back in situ and, with them, the bonhomous hospitality they were missing so much. The process was painstaking, like a protracted chess game, for this tawny-brown Hamstone pile in Somerset had suffered serious indignities over the years. To make it right again would require something like a miracle.

1 month ago | worldofinteriors.com | Ruth Guilding |Lesley Lau

‘I’m a magpie. It’s even on my business card,’ says Farang Wren as I rotate on my heel, taking in the visual Sensurround that is her kitchen. She came to this high-ceilinged residence in Hackney 12 years ago with her husband and two small children. Also making themselves known are two lively black-and-white collies, rescued from a puppy farmer. We discuss this urge to save stuff when comparing notes on the things we own and why.

2 months ago | worldofinteriors.com | Ruth Guilding |Ollie Tomlinson

In the tin-mining town of St Just, just north of Land’s End, there is a characterful little shop that seemed to spring up in the night like a mushroom just over a decade ago, the many-paned window of what had once been an old hardware shop suddenly filled with a treasure trove of curiosities, maritime salvage, painted sailor’s chests, sea shells and antique telescopes.

Mar 24, 2025 | worldofinteriors.com | Ruth Guilding

When I was 19 I stayed with my boyfriend’s mother for a summer, high up under a small mountain in Snowdonia. In an extraordinary old house and garden called Plas Brondanw on the scarp slope of the valley below we visited a friend of his grandmother’s, a venerable lady in a chignon, full skirts and wool stockings, who scrutinised us kindly.