Z He and Alex Peffly in their very unfussy East End living room. Voyage à Nankin wallpaper from Ananbô.
Nostalgia is a tricky thing. It can be elegiac. It can be celebratory. Nostalgia can inspire or lock one in the past. When expressed in interior design, it runs the risk of looking gimmicky, like a landlocked seafood restaurant decorated with buoys and lobster pots. But for those of a certain sensibility, it exerts an irresistible pull. And when driven by personal history, it can be a powerful component of identity.
China-born architect and restaurateur Z He and her partner, chef Alex Peffly, live in London’s Spitalfields, the once rough-and-tumble East End district where French Huguenot weavers set up shop in the 17th century and Jack the Ripper’s final victim made her home. The couple reside in Princelet Street, whose Georgian-era houses are among the best preserved in a neighborhood that has seen its share of tussles over gentrification. Steps from the curry restaurants and vintage shops of well-trod Brick Lane, their residence underwent a major renovation before they moved in, executed by Chris Dyson Architects, specialists in historic conservation. Appreciative of the work done, the two have not made any changes to the layout or structure. But they have made the space very much theirs with a design infused by Z He’s memories of the country she called home until age 12.
“I have spent different times of my life living in Canada, America and Europe, and I am particularly fascinated by the Western imagination of the East, especially in the old days when the portrayal was often fantastical and flamboyant,” Z shares. “Naturally, I have my own understanding and interpretation of the East and the West I grew up in, and I often [interweave] the two – not to ‘correct’ the aesthetic, but to fuse the wonders of both to create my very own fantastical interpretation.”
Subtle and indirect, evident but not overwhelming, Z’s cross-cultural exercise constitutes a conversation, not a lecture. Here and there (on a windowsill, in a fireplace) she has deposited large, glazed jars, in which she ages Shaoxing wine, the rice-based brew that originated in Eastern China. The atelier-like living room sports a panoramic chinoiserie wallpaper from Ananbô. Refreshingly underpopulated, the skylighted space is home to various eBay finds (including a wood-framed armchair reupholstered with a House of Hackney fabric) and curious objects, such as a basket picked up from a Bangladeshi grocer down the road.
In addition to their restaurants, which include Bun House in Chinatown and Wun’s Tea Room & Bar in Soho, the couple operate a bed and breakfast down the block from their home. Like the streets outside, where newly christened hipsters mingle with longtime residents, these interiors ride on a wonderful commingling more engagingly random than arduously arranged (think a less studied Soho House). In one room, an Arne Jacobsen Charlottenborg Chair forms an unsuspected partnership with a dark, time-worn tea table. Elsewhere, a vintage rattan table and chairs are grouped with a daybed repurposed from an old wine rack. But a taste for traditional arrangements has a place here as well. A bedroom is outfitted with a not-too-old, curtained four-poster bed, a rosy-hued velvet sofa set at its foot. Like Spitalfields itself, where the past is ever-present, Z’s interiors are not quite here and not quite there. Neither wistful nor twee, they are just about right.
Photography by Rachel Smith.
For more like this East End home, be sure to check out Uli Weber’s authentically composed residence in London.
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