A Room of One’s Own: the textured calm of James Thurstan Waterworth’s studio

Winding through the medieval archways and cloisters of The Charterhouse, cow parsley spilling out from meadow-like lawns, you can get happily lost. It is an otherworldly oasis that’s more Oxbridge quad than central London. Once used as a cemetery for victims of the Black Death, later a Carthusian monastery, then a Tudor mansion, and finally a charitable foundation, today it still serves as an almshouse with its community of ‘brothers’ – as the residents have historically been called, although today they are no longer only men.

There’s the Great Hall with its towering wood-panelled walls, the Jacobean chapel, cobbled Washhouse Court – and, with some careful navigation, you can find yourself outside the creaking wooden doors of designer James Thurstan Waterworth’s studio, next door’s Smithfield Market just out of earshot. James – who set up his studio Thurstan in 2018 after more than three years as European design director at Soho House – has transformed a rundown and bland corporate office into his own creative treasure trove. 

“I had no idea this place existed until my uncle told me about it. He regularly had lunch in Le Cafe du Marche just next door, and was a member of the gardens here,” James recalls. “About six months later I was looking on Rightmove at pictures of an office that hadn’t been touched for years and in the reflection of a mirror left on the wall I spotted this greenery. I thought ‘Where has a garden in London?’, so I looked at a map and realised it was right here.” That was two years ago; the space is now shared with his team of 18, as well as his designer wife, Scarlett Supple. 

Inside, wicker baskets overspilling with textiles, towering stacks of design books and an eclectic stash of antiques provide tactile inspiration for each of the projects he has pinned to the walls (‘White Truffle’ by Francesca’s Paints). Among them is the new Zetter Bloomsbury hotel, the Duke of Somerset’s sprawling Bradley House in Wiltshire, a 13-room hotel in Lisbon, as well as the snug he’s worked on with Hector Finch for this summer’s WOW!house – the designer showcase in Chelsea Harbour.

“Each project has a different feel to it, so the studio feels like a neutral canvas before I start on each of them,” James explains, among shelves lined with samples of wooden flooring and earthy tiles, all the while light beams through the windows onto the central, communal table. 

During the week, he faces eye-wateringly early starts with his two small children, a dash across town from his home in Kensal Rise on his scooter, the ritual of a pre-work sauna at a nearby gym and a Friday night escape west to his bolthole in the rolling Wiltshire countryside. But amid it all, there’s a tranquillity to Charterhouse Square. “You really notice the seasons here,” James reflects. “If I have a call, I can go outside just for a wander around, to soak up the smells, the textures and listen to the parakeets whistling.”

Delving into his creative space, he has thoughtfully crafted a place that ignites inspiration, yet encourages productivity. “I always wanted the space to have an informal library feel to it, rather than lots of tidy white boxes. You want people to be inspired here – whether that’s by a 17th-century mirror that’s lying around or some Portuguese embroidered material. At the same time, you do need some headspace. The team wants to know where everything is.

“When it came to furniture, we just raided my storage – we have about 3,000 square feet of it. I go to antique fairs to buy for projects and get a bit carried away, whether that’s at an auction in Italy, the antiques fair in Béziers, or close to our home in the West Country at Shepton. If my gut moves and the price is right, then it’s a no-brainer and I’m decisive about it. If I can’t justify the immediate cost then I think about it and, towards the end of the day, I try to ask myself, ‘If I went back and it wasn’t there, how would I feel?’” A sentiment we can all empathise with.

James was first inspired by his stepmother’s antique shop in Alderley Edge in Cheshire. “She was an antique dealer specialising in early English oaks and walnuts, and I was always interested. Even at eight or nine years old, there was a feeling of excitement about the way she’d done the shop and the smells of those early pieces.

“There were these amazing dark greeny-blue hues on the walls, the lovely sea grasses and her real appreciation for patina. The shop had everything from decorative early croquet balls to larger cabinets, and there was a joy to it all. I was shipped away to a boys’ boarding school, so interiors weren’t top of the agenda but I used to get The World of Interiors and House & Garden magazines sent to me, which I’d then hide under my bed.”

But later in life, he began to realise that antiques and interiors were a route he could follow. “For my 20th birthday present, my stepmother bought me an early 19th-century French gilt finial and I remember that same year I went to visit [the designer, dealer and gallerist] Axel Vervoordt’s house in Antwerp with my parents. It was quite a monumental moment for me. 

“When I was still quite young, I went to work for [the Swedish architect and designer] Martin Brudnizki, who sent me off to New York to set up his office there. We then won the Soho Beach House Miami project, so I was knee-deep in that for a couple of years. When [Soho House founder] Nick Jones decided he wanted everything in-house, I went to work for him. There was something about those early houses that was genuine and authentic, it was about finding old pieces and the rooms not looking too perfect, which was unusual for hotels at that time.”  

James is now set to work on The Zetter Bloomsbury project, which opens later this year, applying the same level of detail and thought to their newest outpost. “We bought these old Japanese mosquito nets out in the South of France and we didn’t know what to do with them, so we started playing with lampshades and the light it gives off is amazing. 

“And then there’s this early 20th-century teal French linen, which we’re planning to use on the trim of a bedspread for one of the rooms. There are a tonne of nuances that you always hope people will notice in a project and it’s about allowing yourself the time to try different things without knowing exactly how they will turn out.”

Never short of inspiration, he loves to visit houses such as Stourhead in Somerset and Houghton Hall in Norfolk – “As well as looking through old magazines and vintage historical design books,” he explains. “And of course, being surrounded by the amazing history we have here at the studio. We’re always testing out ways of doing things and doing mini mock-ups. But being creative doesn’t necessarily mean thousands of colours and different fabrics – it could equally be something pared back. It’s just about looking at something in a different way.” 

James on Instagram