The Arts Club in London, founded by Charles Dickens and Lord Frederic Leighton, has been a hub for the Arts since the 19th century. With guests and members such as Kipling, Monet, Rodin and Turgenev it certainly can claim to have an enviable heritage.
With HRH Prince Philip as it’s official Patron and Sir Peter Blake as President of the Club, it boasts ‘artist’ members such as royal academicians, architects, musicians, writers and actors, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kim Cattrall and Ronnie Wood as well as renowned ‘non-artist’ members such as Richard Attenborough, David Frost and Matthew Parris.
So it was with great pride and some trepidation, in the face of all these famous connections, that Period Mouldings took on the task of assisting in the recreation of the original character wood mouldings.
The project
Working with David D’Almada, the renowned interior designer, we managed to reinstate the splendour of the building’s wood mouldings.
Many of the rooms were furnished with the mouldings from our online range.
For the main function rooms the design team and investors were after a statement piece, wanting a skirting board that spoke gravitas and grandeur. They needed height and depth to show the new interior design to its best effect whilst not detracting from the building’s character.
We set about the task of designing a new 450mm high skirting board, through our bespoke service, that was ornate but classy, had depth but was not chunky and could be fitted easily using all the woodwork engineering principles we have built up over the last 15 years of installing wood mouldings in period homes.
The result was the Mayfair. A 450mm high two part skirting board that was 52mm deep at its base and had specifically placed “packers” that allowed the fitters to site the boards easily, accurately and quickly.
The Mayfair was an immediate hit with Gwyneth Paltrow (one of the key figures on the project) and secured us the contract to work on one of the most exciting refurbishment programmes in London in 2011.
So what next?
Hollywood aficionados will be pleased to hear that a new version of the product is available to the general public and the Mayfair will surge onwards into people’s homes throughout the UK safe in the knowledge that its pedigree for design, creativity, resourcefulness and pure beauty are second to none.
