Inside Robert Kime's enchanting family house in Provence, La Gonette
“There are layers upon layers of magic at La Gonette,” says Hannah Kime, the daughter of Robert and Helen Kime. It is something that everyone who knows the house agrees on. The landscape and the house itself have their inherent magic, on top of which the Kimes spread an extraordinary interior and a deeply welcoming atmosphere. “It is a very hospitable, generous house,” continues Hannah. “Every time you walk in, it embraces you in the most sublimely beautiful way. I think both of my parents loved the creation of a home, that place where you felt safe and comfortable and peaceful. And they were very, very good at it.”
The house is set amidst the lavender fields of Provence, near the village of Simiane-la-Rotonde. It had been seriously damaged by fire in the 1950s, and left derelict, with no floors, holes in the roof, and decades’ worth of rubbish accumulating in its rooms. When Robert and Helen first came to it in 1999, it was owned by friends of their friend, the designer and antique dealer Michael Trapp, who had built an apartment to live in on the site but had never restored the main house. “The house was absolutely charming in its ruined state,” says Michael, who lent it the moniker of ‘the sleeping princess.’ “There were beds upstairs with giant bits of plaster that had fallen on top of them, but a bottle of pills still intact on the bedside table, and the lace curtains still in place. It was hauntingly beautiful.” When Michael told them about it, “Helen had 5000 questions,” he remembers. He took them to dinner with his friends there, and despite only seeing it in the dark, Robert and Helen were determined to buy it, visiting again the next day for a picnic in the grounds and exploring the broken-down rooms. At the beginning it was Helen who spearheaded the project; she bought the house after selling her audiobook business, and visited the project most frequently with the architect Mary-Lou Arscott, a long-standing friend of the couple who had worked with them on several of their houses.
Mary-Lou’s job was to make the house liveable and comfortable again, of course, building out floors, ceilings and staircases, but also, as she puts it, “to give voice to the previous lives of the structure,” ensuring that the past would live on in its current incarnation. “The building has great history,” she continues. “It pretends it’s a grand house; from the front it has a grand façade and a terrace and a polite two storeys and undercroft, so it presents as something quite unified. But from the back you can see its history as a farmhouse and the way it grew organically, so there’s a mixture of volumes and spaces. When we renovated the house, it was allowed to stay that way, and I think that’s important. You have to have a dialogue with the building, and be relaxed enough to let it be not quite practical.”
If respect for the past was a hallmark of the restoration, so was a respect for the local architectural vernacular of Haute-Provence. “The place is the teacher, and the language of that part of France is amazingly strong and old,” says Mary-Lou. There was much searching through local salvage yards for architectural features; the highlight was her finding a set of ‘exquisitely thin’ stone steps all scattered at random around one yard. It took days of measuring them and studying them, but eventually with the help of an engineer, these became the graceful cantilevered staircase that soars upwards from the entrance hall, one of the anchors of the house. The local builders and tradesmen who worked on La Gonette were very much part of its success, and there was ongoing exchange of expertise and techniques between them and Mary-Lou. “What is so amazing in that region is that the building skills are both strongly tied to the nature of the place and the climate, but they are also extremely well supported technically. These people were at the top of their game, but they also talked to each other and respected each other.”
Robert began to collect for the house almost immediately, and continued to do so over the course of the renovation, carrying on that instinctive process of selecting and editing objects that made him so renowned as a decorator. “He had a very clear communication with places,” explains Hannah. “And so the house would talk to him and he would just intrinsically know what was going to feel right there.” “The house had beautiful proportions and beautiful light, and lent itself easily as a structural backdrop to beautiful objects,” says Michael. “The carpets and textiles anchored the spaces; there were exquisite textiles everywhere, and every room had something that anchored it.” The blend of things, from Art Deco fabric and Arts & Crafts furniture to Moroccan needlework and Iznik pottery, sounds typically Kime-ian, but it was peculiarly tailored to the house and environment. “If you took everything from La Gonette and recreated it in England, would it feel the same?” asks Hannah. “No, because the light is different, the colours are different, the feeling is different. And I think that was what made Dad so clever. He could envision an end result from a great distance.” And while there was a period of experimentation and moving things around once the house was finished, it was short, as Hannah recalls. “He did it in one go in the space of a fortnight, and the bones of it did not change ever.”
Although the interiors of La Gonette are justly receiving a great deal of attention as the Dreweatts sale approaches, the gardens were equally part of its magic, and a great passion of Robert’s. “There wasn’t much of a garden there to start with,” remembers Hannah, “but there were four distinctly different walled gardens and he created this amazing sanctuary. He wasn’t daunted by it at all.” Robert worked with Michael Trapp add fountains, rills and planted screening. “There were marvellous anchors in that garden, and we just cleaned out what needed to be cleaned in a minimal way,” Michael explains. Just as Mary-Lou relates with the house, the garden, as Michael says, “was allowed to be. It had its soul left intact.”
The garden was also a productive one, and a source for the endless cooking that went on in the huge double kitchen.. “As a family we love food, and so life at La Gonette centred around the kitchen,” Hannah continues. “One of the first things my mother did in France was plant a Bramley apple tree and a damson trees so that she could make the annual chutney recipes passed down from her own mother.” Everyone agrees that the house was incredibly comfortable, and full of the modern conveniences that Helen insisted on, but without them becoming obtrusive. “It was really a modern house,” remarks Michael. “It didn’t read that way, but you just had to stick out your hand for what you wanted and it would be there.” This set the stage for many years of entertaining, of meals on the terrace, in the orangerie, and around the great marble-topped kitchen table that followed the Kimes around through all their houses. “That table has been the touchstone of our family since 1975,” says Hannah. “Their entertaining wasn't about special occasions or showing off. They were just always seeking to create this feeling of welcome.”
“I think part of my parents’ skill was just in seeing what could be there from the beginning,” Hannah concludes. “It’s in the clearness of the light and the dryness of the air, in the mountains and the colours of the landscape, but also the proportions of the house, and the way it can be comfortable and generous without being cavernous. They recognised all that from the start when it was a ruin. They could see a life there.”
Robert Kime: The Personal Collection is taking place at Dreweatts October 4-6. See the catalogue and find out more at dreweatts.com
Tessa Traeger1/18The entrance hall leads through to the back of the house, with its enfilade of rooms leading through the kitchen, sitting room, dining room, hall and library.
Tessa Traeger2/18The other half of the kitchen contains the more functional elements, alongside a variety of freestanding and fitted furniture that gives an impression of timelessness. The dresser on the left contains a collection of Turkish plates.
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Tessa Traeger4/18Looking along the ground floor enfilade of rooms.
Tessa Traeger5/18The library, with a 19th-century bookcase along the back wall, topped by Roman pots and Iznik plates.
Tessa Traeger6/18Robert seated at his Arts and Crafts desk in the library, with a Moroccan needlework ottoman to the left, and a 19th-century painting of the Symonds Yat, Wye Valley behind the sofa.
Tessa Traeger7/18Helen's study at the west end of the ground floor.
Tessa Traeger8/18A mirror reflects the half-tester bed in the main bedroom. A collection of Cameroon hats stands on the mantelpiece.
Tessa Traeger9/18An Ottoman chest of drawers stands between the windows in the main bedroom. The curtains are in Robert Kime's ‘Opium Poppy’.
Tessa Traeger10/18In one of the guest rooms, a French armoire takes centre stage, flanked by two chairs, with a Persian carpet on the floor.
Tessa Traeger11/18The curtains in the same room were made in Robert Kime's ‘Field Poppy’.
Tessa Traeger12/18Black and white architectural prints provide points of interest in this blue and white guest bathroom.
Tessa Traeger13/18Another guest bathroom on the first floor.
Tessa Traeger14/18The pool and hamman, constructed in a roofless barn in the garden, from local cream stone and pink granite.
Tessa Traeger15/18The doors are constructed in a local vernacular style.
Tessa Traeger16/18Irises in the garden.
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