Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler is a company established in the 1930’s. As a traditional English decorating firm, it represents country house style with characteristic elegance and homely decor.
Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler is a company established in the 1930’s. As a traditional English decorating firm, it represents country house style with characteristic elegance and homely decor.
The company’s founders, Fowler and Lady Colefax, were both British citizens, interested in decoration and design. Fowler was born in 1906 in Lingfield, Surrey. When he was 16, he left school and joined the decorating and antiques firm Thornton Smith, where he painted Chinese-style wallpaper (sold as 18th century originals), and learned other paint decoration techniques such as marbling and graining. He was involved in redecoration of dozens of properties, including Radbourne Hall, Daylesford House, Tyninghame House and Grimsthorpe Castle and worked on decorative schemes for Buckingham Palace, Holyroodhouse, Chequers, Chevening, Christ Church, Oxford, and the Bank of England. Along with John Cornforth he co-wrote English Decoration in the 18th Century, a book published in 1976. In 1934, Fowler established his buissness with Lady Colefax. Her childhood spent in Cawnpore, India, was a source of later inspirations and ideas. After losing most of her family fortune in the Wall Street Crash, Lady Sibyl started to decorate interiors professionally. Thanks to her influences and impeccable taste, she quickly gained clients and purchased a decorating division which belonged to the antique dealers Stair and Andrew of Bruton Street. Sadly, the Fowler-Colefax partnership was cut short due to the war and in 1944 and Sibyl Colefax sold the business to Nancy Tree for £10000.
The company continues to grow in the same place that Fowler set it in – 39 Brook Street, Mayfair. With commissions concentrated on residential design, the clients can chose from the seven independent decorators, each experienced in particular areas, but all maintaining the highest professional standards. As Wendy Nicholls, one of the firm’s directors says: ‘We provide rooms that reflect the individuality of the client and respect the architecture of the building.’
Roger Jones, the director of the company’s Antiques Department is a specialist in his field. Not only a decorator extraordinare, but also a great designer, Jones graduated from Cambridge University. Despite spending the first few years of his career as a barrister, he was a great addition to Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler thanks to his great eye for detail and taste which would gain Lady Colefax’s approval.