After a decade living in the rich, numinous landscape of Cornwall, artist Lucy Stein found it very difficult to leave. When her family relocated to the urban terrain of London, it was vital for her to find somewhere that still retained a spark of magic – and so she found a place in Lambeth, right next to where visionary poet and artist William Blake once lived. ‘I sort of have to create these fantasy worlds for myself in order to survive’ Lucy says, ‘basically because I find modern life so completely abhorrent.’
It was fortunate timing, then, that a project she had been discussing with her friend, the architect Leopold Banchini, finally came to fruition. Leopold had been working on George de Vos and Alex Young’s Goodbye Horses – a natural wine bar in north London – which was in need of a mural. Fresh out of Cornwall and back in the grey canyons of the concrete jungle, Lucy was relieved to be presented with an activating new project to get her teeth into. ‘It was almost like the stress of moving had shaken up my imagination. I felt kind of possessed,’ she says with a laugh. A few months later, Lucy began work on their latest project – the Dreamery – an ice cream parlour/wine bar hybrid.
The Dreamery is a more playful companion to both Goodbye Horses and its coffee-shop sibling, Day Trip. Alex and George muse that if these two establishments represent the super ego and ego respectively, then for them the Dreamery is the id, ‘with its invitation of primal desire and instant, sugar-fuelled gratification’. Housed inside a repurposed 19th-century building with no external signage, the mystical world within is suggested only by glimpses through its the three large, panelled windows.
The décor reflects the whimsical treats on offer, with walls tiled in soft pinks and blues offset by a striking grid of timber and Japanese unryu rice-paper panels, painted by Lucy, lining the ceiling. The top half of the walls are lined with mirrors, making the intimate space feel infinite and reflecting the artist’s characterful fantasy mural over and over again. Once she’d nailed down the concept with George, Lucy cleared the floor of her studio and laid out the rice paper sheets ready to paint. She describes her method thereafter as firmly a ‘shoot from the hip’ approach, as she roughly sketched an outline out in charcoal before getting stuck straight into painting. ‘I’m quite fearless about that kind of thing – I should probably be a bit less fearless,’ she says with a chuckle.
The protagonist of Lucy’s mural is the sun, operating as a central force around which a host of quirky characters orbit, which draw from a mixture of folklore and nursery rhymes. Among them is a ‘rather shocked looking bird’, which the artist says is inspired by an illustration from a 1950s-era chocolate box that belonged to her grandmother: ‘I’ve carted it around with me everywhere I’ve lived since being a child,’ she says. Humpty Dumpty, a recurring figure in Lucy’s work, makes an appearance, as does a cow jumping over the moon and a variety of Celtic Green Men.
Lucy may have left behind the ancient, folklore-drenched glory of the West Country, but here, on a residential street in north London, her hands have conjured forth new mythologies for this old city.
For more information, visit dreamery.london
Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive interiors stories like this one, direct to your inbox
