Sophie Barling

Featured in: Favicon

theguardian.com Favicon

apollo-magazine.com Favicon

houseandgarden.co.uk Favicon

thehotelguru.com Favicon

worldofinteriors.com

Articles

The year ahead in arty books, 2025

Jan 7, 2025 | apollo-magazine.com | Sophie Barling

The Princess of 72nd Street, Elaine Kraf (Penguin Modern Classics, 2 Jan)‘I don’t need LSD for things to look pretty,’ says Ellen, the artist protagonist of this 1979 New York novel by painter and writer Elaine Kraf (who died in 2013). This is because Ellen often experiences what she calls ‘the radiance’ – an involuntary state of liberation and bliss which she attempts to ride out and channel into her work.
Review: ‘Italian Maiolica and Other Early Modern Ceramics in the Courtauld Gallery’ by Elisa Sani

Nov 14, 2024 | worldofinteriors.com | Sophie Barling

It may comfort WoI readers to know that even Isabella d’Este had to endure delays in her redecorating projects. In January 1493 a letter from Pesaro, where a large consignment of maiolica tiles for the marchesa’s palace in Mantua was being made, informed her that ‘the weather is not at all suitable for drying the tiles’, and that ‘they would probably be ready a little later than you desire’. A notoriously exacting patron, Isabella is unlikely to have received such news with equanimity.
Bringing Pompeii back to life

Sep 2, 2024 | apollo-magazine.com | Sophie Barling

From the September 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. The view directly ahead of me is classically, achingly picturesque: Vesuvius as backdrop, its distinctive outline purple-blue against an azure sky, while in the foreground umbrella pines soften the scene’s edges above a group of ancient columns and sections of stone wall.
The favourite fabric of the French elite

Aug 26, 2024 | apollo-magazine.com | Sophie Barling

From the June 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. The small town of Jouy-en-Josas is a short train ride from Paris, four kilometres south-east of Versailles. Wandering through this sleepy sylvan suburb, the visitor is hard-pressed to find any trace of what was, at the turn of the 19th century, France’s third-largest industry.
Gardening with the Bloomsbury Group

Aug 5, 2024 | apollo-magazine.com | Sophie Barling

From the July/August 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. ‘How often have I […] leant out gazing, gazing at the moonlight cutting across the gates […] I would creep down and open the old front door and wander out, like a ghost into the silent world and watch the white flowers bathed in a still more luminous white light’. There is in ‘Gardening Bohemia’ a visual match to these words written by Ottoline Morrell about Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire.
Tangerine dreams: bold colour brings a home to life

Jan 7, 2024 | theguardian.com | Sophie Barling

On a shelf in the sitting room of Emily Johnson’s west London home sits a tangerine. Its skin is pocked and waxy-looking and appropriately citrussy. On closer inspection, however, it seems a fraction too glossy, and a quick squeeze confirms it is glazed earthenware. Johnson had the piece made by her ceramics company, 1882, in honour of Glasgow-born artist Bruce McLean, with whom she and her team in Stoke-on-Trent have collaborated for the last few years.
Sylvia Snowden at Edel Assanti gallery in London

Sep 4, 2023 | worldofinteriors.com | Charlotte Jansen |Sophie Barling

‘Discovered – that’s a bad word,’ Sylvia Snowden says emphatically, speaking from her home in Washington DC. When the word is flung around in the contemporary-art world, it usually refers to an artist who has been ignored, overlooked – someone the establishment slept on for decades.
Barbara and René Stoeltie return to their 17th-century Dutch castle apartment

Sep 4, 2023 | worldofinteriors.com | Sophie Barling

If someone had asked us if we ever thought of leaving our apartment in a 17th-century castle in the Dutch countryside (WoI Aug 1993), we would have shrugged our shoulders and pretended we hadn’t heard the question. Saying goodbye to a one-of-a-kind suite of rooms, one with Louis XV and Régence panelling and a breathtaking view over a picturesque landscape with grazing cows, would have been crazy.
Christopher Wren death anniversary marked by giant pendulum in London

Sep 3, 2023 | worldofinteriors.com | Sophie Barling |Michael David Huey

‘The beauty of the pendulum is that the time it takes for it to circle – and this pendulum will circle rather than swing back and forth – is dictated purely by the length of it; and we have a lot of length here, so hopefully it will circle very slowly.’ The German-born designer Moritz Waldemeyer is explaining how his installation Halo will work when it is installed beneath Christopher Wren’s dome in September.
Period pieces at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs

Aug 29, 2023 | apollo-magazine.com | Sophie Barling

From the September 2023 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. In one episode of Absolutely Fabulous, Patsy finds herself at an editorial meeting for the glossy magazine of which she is – when she can remember the way to the office – style director. Ideas for the next issue are thrown around. ‘Chairs, I thought might be quite interesting,’ drawls one of her colleagues.