Flora Soames’ magic box of textiles

Since her teens, the English interior designer Flora Soames has scoured Provençal flea markets, East Anglian antiques shops, car-boot sales, auction houses and dealers in search of decorative treasures, often from the 18th century. “I’ve picked up old gold threads, lengths of damask and French patchwork quilts,” she says of her obsession. “There wasn’t always a plan. I was merely collecting things that appealed to me and that I wanted to live with.”

For Soames, collecting is one of life’s most potent pleasures and she has a deep attachment to the trove she has gathered. “At unexpected times in life, collecting has lifted me up and propelled me forwards,” she says of the grounding power of her possessions.

It’s drawing out the Barbara Cartland in me

What began with a single trunk brimming with wallpapers, textiles, braids and trimmings (along with photographs and correspondence) that she ritualistically packed, unpacked and pondered over in her bedroom, now fills garages and outhouses scattered between her home and studio in Dorset. As her collection has grown, its sentimental value has also deepened, becoming as much an aesthetic archive as a personal chronicle. “These are things I simply couldn’t let go of,” she says.

In recent times, as Soames has built her practice, servicing clients including Wiltons restaurant and arts advisory Beaumont Nathan, her archive has lain dormant. “I’d always dig through the collection saying ‘one day this will become a lampshade’ or ‘one day this will sit on my back porch’,” she says. “It became part of my wider vision for what my life would become – not that things turn out how you might think.”

Thanks to a friend this decorative daydreaming ignited the term the “one day box” – a repository filled with future promise. It became the title for Soames’ first book, released last year by Rizzoli – a visual memoir and design manual.

“Over time, the term has become a catch-all for the vagaries of my collecting,” says Soames, who launched her namesake line of nostalgic fabrics and wallpapers in 2019. Though she planned to create just a handful of designs, the range has grown to encompass 15 patterns spanning from generous, blousy florals to Syrian-inspired stripes and richly woven damasks.

Soames is also transforming her “collecting habit” into a sophisticated series of one-of-a-kind furniture and decorative objects. “It has been a deeply emotional exercise,” she says of creating The One Day Box Collection. It marks the culmination of more than a quarter of a century of collecting, and two years of imagination and design, as she has amassed a small, highly skilled team of craftspeople and artisans to bring new life to the objects.

More than a mere assortment of belongings, the result is a curated ensemble of lamps, cushions, sofas, stools, ottomans and one-off textile fragments. There’s an almost archaeological quality to the pieces, which include auction lots garnered from other collectors such as a 19th-century spoon-back chair from the Elveden Estate, which has been extensively restored and reupholstered in Soames’ Daphne fabric (£290 a metre); and a Victorian chaise longue once belonging to the Duchess of Devonshire, from a Chatsworth attic sale that had long lingered in her home and is now, after much TLC, swathed in her Cornucopia print (£344 a metre), ready to work its magic elsewhere (£8,900).

Many of the pieces are a manifestation of what Soames calls “pure lust”. She stumbled upon an early 19th-century English ottoman sofa online; Soames looked past the fact that its horsehair filling was spilling out and was drawn to its beautifully worked tapestry back and beribboned base, which is now expertly mended and offset by aubergine-hued mohair and simple hessian (£5,700). Rather than eliminate the patina of age, the art here was knowing what to tinker with and what to leave “so as not to overwork things”, says Soames.

Elsewhere, the acid-yellow 19th-century damask pelmets Soames picked up years ago have found a second life as cushion covers with flamboyant tassel trims, while a mid-1800s wool shawl has become a fine gathered shade on a floor lamp. “Rather than a happy-go-lucky, pile-it-in-your-trunk approach, there is a very ordered element at work here,” says the designer, who has drawn on her formative experience working alongside the furniture dealer Ken Bolan of the now-closed antique shop Talisman. The goal is to stay true to the original craftsmanship of each piece. Though not strictly speaking bespoke, this is the antithesis of instant, mass-produced homeware.

Soames, who is known for her idiosyncratic interior schemes, has indulged her more playful side. Not least in the standout, antique silver silk lampshade, decked with a decadent gold fringe (£1,975 for pair). “It has a wonderful sheen that lends itself to bringing some opulence and glamour,” she says. “It’s the Barbara Cartland in me”.

Now, when the moment has come to relinquish all her treasures, one wonders how she’s feeling about saying goodbye to them? “Every object says a lot about the child, teenager and adult that invested in them,” she says. “But I was holding onto a lot. Realistically, one person only has so much room for magenta lengths of damask.” She adds: “They’ve had long enough in the trunk. It’s time for them to find a place in someone else’s home.” The pay-off is that clearing out the one day box inevitably makes room for more.