Colefax & Fowler

Sibyl Colefax began decorating in 1930. By 1938 she needed help, and asked John Fowler, then a rising young decorator, to join her at Bruton Street in Mayfair; the company was renamed Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler the following year. In 1948 the American heiress Nancy Lancaster bought the firm from her friend.

Fowler's work is the reason the phrase English country house style means anything. He worked with the National Trust on Clandon Park, Lyme Park, Sudbury Hall, Claydon House and Uppark House, at Chequers, and on the Audience Room at Buckingham Palace. The Yellow Room he and Nancy Lancaster made at 39 Brook Street is listed Grade II star.

The first off-the-shelf fabric collections came in 1973, from The Chintz Shop on Ebury Street, and the first range to include wallpapers followed in 1982. Two chintzes from those first collections, Bowood and Fuchsia, have been in production ever since. The company had nineteen staff when Nancy Lancaster bought it and now has more than three hundred, with its head office still in Mayfair.

It is the house we open when a room wants pattern with some age in it. Linen leads the compositions in our library, the cloth runs about 138cm wide, and every fabric here publishes its composition, pattern repeat, fire code and care code, which is most of what a curtain quote needs. What it does not publish is a rub test, so for upholstery we check the grade on the book before we recommend it.