These days, it seems, any interior designer worth their salt has their own furniture line. It makes a lot of sense: designers spend huge amounts of time and energy creating pieces for their interiors projects with these designs usually never seeing the light of day again.
That was part of the motivation for longtime House & Garden Top 100 honoree Nicola Harding, who says she often found herself struggling to source the perfect piece for a project–and designing it instead. The result is NiX, a full scale homeware collection designed by Nicola. The playful, craft-rich, and elegant qualities we have come to know from her work are at the heart of the collection. ‘If the interior design side of the business is me having you round for dinner’, she explains, ‘then NiX is more like you popping round for a coffee.’ It’s relaxed, unpretentious and considerably less of an investment.
Her first launch was lighting. ‘For me, these are the pieces which make up the staples of a room’, says Nicola. ‘Imagine Margaret Howell and Labour and Wait having a lovechild in the form of homeware’. They will not be the statement pieces which divert attention, but they’re the essentials which you can easily slot into any space. The lighting collection comprises a ceiling light, two floor lights ('the perfect height so that it doesn't feel like something is looming over you if you’re reading beneath it'), five wall lights and three table lamps.
Each of the pieces has been inspired by antiques Nicola has found over the years. The ‘To the Point’ floor lamp, for example, has its roots in an antique metal articulated light that Nicola used in a Notting Hill family house project ‘Try as I might, I’ve never been able to find anything since that did the job as well’ she says.
Today the range includes upholstered furniture. Think sofas, armchairs, and perfect slipper chairs, Each of these are available in her new range of fabrics, which can also be bought by the metre. The patterned fabrics , all made in the Midlands, are 'the reliable basics': there’s a ticking stripe, a check and a range of plain block colours.
The beds in the collection are particularly good, too. With both wood and upholstered options available, they look natural in a number of aesthetics without fading to the background. This bedroom in Bianca Fincham's cottage on the Cornish coast features a stylish Nix design, a twist on the traditional four poster. In Penmaenuchaf, a glorious country house hotel designed by Nicola Harding, beds from the Nix collection are complimented by various antique tapestries and quilts which are used to curtain around and above headboards, or otherwise hung like artworks on the wall.
