Known for its classical and architectural approach to interior design, Studio Killian-Dawson has worked on historically rich homes around the world, offering a range of bespoke furnishings and sourcing appropriate antiques and fine art to authentically restore spaces. Here, co-founder and creative director Renée Killian-Dawson shares the secrets behind the creation of this beautifully detailed bedroom in a historic townhouse in Savannah, Georgia.
We were brought in to work on the main bedroom of this eight-bedroom house. The idea was to make it more of a commanding space and more crisp. It’s a family house in a broad sense because although the client is on his own, he has extended family and friends he likes to share his home with. From start to finish the project took a year and a half and it drew upon the talents of textile manufacturers, gilders, antique restorers and designers from around the world.
The architecture in Georgia tends to be quite boisterous and confident. The ceilings in the house are quite extraordinary – around 14ft tall – so finding a bed that would be comfortable for our bachelor client, but not a wide Hollywood-style bed, was a challenge. The previous bed was a four-poster but it was modern: in any other room, it would have looked huge and tall but in this one it had no presence because the scale is enormous. I knew the client wanted to create something that would be utterly unique to him.
The client sourced the bed through an antique dealer called Savannah Galleries. It is one of these wonderful, dusty, old-fashioned places with very knowledgeable dealers. The bed is from the 1830s and we are 99 per cent sure it was made for the New Orleans market because it is very tall and very narrow. They had almost Marrakesh-style rooms which were long and narrow. Even in important houses, they didn’t quite have the breadth in comparison to others.
The bed has very elaborate, very masculine carvings, with beautiful brass balls for feet. To make that fit in a room so it didn’t still look tall and narrow was a big architectural challenge. People often don’t realise that you can use soft furnishings in an architectural way, too – so the bed skirts, which were made to my design, worked to stop the bed from looking like it went on and on forever.
The canopy, skirt and neck roll on the bed is finished in Pierre Frey’s ‘Mozart’s chintz; on the inside is a custom embroidery I worked with Chelsea Textiles to make, an off-white and very fine linen embroidery. The trimming, that bobble finish, I designed myself and worked with Sherine Awadallah from Nada Designs, who makes a lot of our own brand’s trimmings. The trimmings I always start from scratch with every new job: I prefer to be able to match the colours to each place. The channel bed cover is made out of silk carriage cloth which is quite robust but doesn’t slide off because the other side is made of cotton.
We had to work with the existing wallpaper and I liked the challenge of making it look beautiful within the room. I thought about Savannah and the place – I felt it was regal, so I went with red. But it had to be a raspberry red: I didn’t want it to match the tapestry hanging over the fireplace, a 1930s reproduction of Versailles The Stag Hunt, which has traces of a much warmer, autumnal red. I am very against matching, but I like things to make sense.
The curtains were already there, but we had to get those to work better – they’re a huge investment in a room this size. As it was, the client really liked the colour, so we rehung them and had Scottish Holland make those lovely blinds behind. I absolutely love them.
I find a lot of the respected American dealers charge a lot more for period pieces; you may actually manage find the same thing inexpensively somewhere else if you know what you’re looking for. There is a whole area in the north of Florida which has a lot of emporiums where you can find some wonderful things.
All the furniture is either mahogany or rosewood, except for the cabinet which hides the TV. The stone-top table and the little Empire-style chairs were an auction find – they were not expensive. I don’t think our job is to create perfection, it is to abandon perfection. These pieces are like a stopping point, but they also give a sense of intimacy and practicality to the room which I really like. It is more unusual in American historic bedrooms, but a lot of John Fowler and Nancy Lancaster examples had a writing table at the front of the bed… so it’s an extension of that as well.
The sofa at the foot of the bed has a soft damask that we made with Humphries in Suffolk. Finding a sofa for the end of the bed was extremely difficult – I knew I wanted rosewood, but we are not allowed to export rosewood from the UK since it’s a rare wood, so we had to find one over there, which took about nine months. It is really beautiful with lovely brass details at the front of it.
I love the chevalier mirror on the floor which is very pretty with the foxed glass. I like the fact it is small and intimate and near the bed which is nice because everything else is over-scaled so it brings a balance. The cushions are Aubusson and I wanted modern ones instead of antiques for the cost and also because I didn’t want them to be too precious. I looked all over the world for them but I found them astonishingly at the Pars Rug Gallery, down the road from where we live in Hampshire.
The client has a lot of meaningful things: he’s the collector of the family, he has always had a love and respect for antiques and things passed down to him. A lot of the personal items on the mantlepiece are from his family collection, while the chandelier is original to the house. The chest of drawers is another heirloom: it’s a reproduction that he had topped with glass, and its mirror just above was found in one of the antique places in Savannah.
What I like here is that the room is very practical in one sense, and very romantic in another. No-one would want to create a space like this if they didn’t have a sense of romance, a respect for craftsmanship and a depth of understanding of what it takes to make something special. Providing those things is what we do in every job.
The last piece of the project, which was the federal rosewood sofa at the foot of the bed, went in summer 2022 – the owner agrees it was worth the wait. With us, clients know that to completely finish a room can take years. A good room evolves over time so it takes a lot of vision and trust on their part, something we never take for granted.
Studio Killian-Dawson, 48 Stony Batter Ln, Salisbury SP5 1LD. Details: studiokilliandawson.com
