Serena Fokschaner

London

Design and Interiors Writer for national media at Freelance

Design and interiors journo with (tricky) Mitteleuropean surname. Mainly on Instagram. Shelfies not selfies though.

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Articles

a reborn Victorian live-work spac...

3 days ago | observer.co.uk | Serena Fokschaner

The founders of a wallpaper design firm have married tradition and innovation at their stone house in Wirksworth A sign inside the Derbyshire home of Maxine Hall and Paula Moss, co-founders of Blackpop wallpaper designs, is evidence of the building’s intriguing past. The words “Outdoors Dept” etched into a glass door recall the years when the building, on a prominent corner site in Wirksworth, was owned by a firm of tailors. The robust stone property, set in a parade of shops, was built in 1899.
An Arts & Crafts house on the edge of London with an interior to suit its literary past

1 week ago | houseandgarden.co.uk | Serena Fokschaner

An 18th-century French limestone water trough, York Stone flags and Palissade garden furniture by HAY make the terrace an inviting spot. Hydrangea, roses and wisteria frame the listed exterior, which features precast Victorian tiles by William H. Lascelles (1832–85). Dean HearneThe publisher Rebeka Russell has always been intrigued by the way houses and locations can ‘seep’ into a writer’s imagination.
We are all secretly craving an all-white room

1 month ago | ft.com | Serena Fokschaner

In 1884, Oscar and Constance Wilde commissioned the fashionable architect EW Godwin to transform their Chelsea home from a conventional...
Serious swag: striking ideas for curtains beyond the window

1 month ago | ft.com | Serena Fokschaner

When she was a child, interior designer Octavia Dickinson would clamber into her parents’ four-poster bed and draw the curtains.
What ever happened to Betty Joel, trailblazing British designer of the 1930s?

1 month ago | ft.com | Serena Fokschaner

In 1931, the designer Betty Joel opened the newly decorated “living room” of her Knightsbridge showroom to the public.
Sennowe Park: an Edwardian pleasure palace that recaptures the spirit of the times

1 month ago | worldofinteriors.com | Serena Fokschaner |James McDonald |James Mcdonald

On a midsummer afternoon, sunshine pours through the high, glazed roof of the winter garden at Sennowe Park in Norfolk. The air is hothouse heady with exotic plants trailing from pots; a fountain plays in the marble gazebo. All that is missing from this quintessentially Edwardian scene are the house-party guests – men in panama hats and stiff collars; the women, elegantly pearl-strung and satin-sash-waisted.
Tiles that are too good to be left in the bathroom

Mar 8, 2025 | ft.com | Serena Fokschaner

The corner of architect Aida Bratovic’s Edwardian home in London has become a magnet for people posing for selfies.
A west London maisonette with a resourceful approach to high-low interiors

Jan 27, 2025 | houseandgarden.co.uk | Serena Fokschaner

Future art historians will single out the pandemic as a defining moment in the development of 21st-century architecture. Aida Bratovic would agree. The architect and interior designer was living in her west London maisonette when the first lockdown was announced. The open-plan top floor, carefully designed for entertaining and cooking, became a full-time workspace for Aida, her wine-merchant husband and their two teenagers.
Art Deco at 100: love it or loathe it?

Jan 22, 2025 | ft.com | Serena Fokschaner

Once a year, interior designer Nicky Haslam creates a tea towel listing the things he finds “common”.
How to make a terraced house suitable for multi-generational living

Jan 21, 2025 | houseandgarden.co.uk | Serena Fokschaner

In a vicarage designed by Tamsin Saunders, a guest bedroom doubles as a study. Chris HorwoodThe terraced house has always been a shapeshifter. Over the centuries, its floor plan has evolved to suit societal needs. In the 1980s we knocked through sitting rooms and bolted on side extensions. By the noughties we were blitzing through back walls, adding voluminous eat-live-cook spaces.