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The journalist-turned-interior designer loves to tell stories through his narrative-heavy projects
Who is he? London interior designer Tom Morris is proof that a second career can be just as successful as a first one. For many years, he was design editor at Monocle and wrote for a host of titles including ELLE Decoration. ‘Having written about interiors for so long, I made the decision to switch from the writing-about to the doing-of,’ he says about his move to set up Morrisstudio in 2018. ‘I had an understanding of design, but the technical skills are another thing, so I did a post-graduate evening course. Then afriend of afriend asked me to decorate their new house, and one job led to another.’
Morris credits his childhood love of art and his university degree in art history as influences on his style, which often features painterly colours, amix of old and new pieces, and references to the arts &crafts movement, California modernism and late 20th-century design (he lives in London’s Barbican Centre, abrutalist icon). As an ex-journalist, he loves to tell stories through his work. ‘We do a lot of digging, interviewing and research before we even look at anything aesthetic, to help build a narrative,’ he says. ‘It’s quite conceptual and gives something to come back to when creative decisions have to be made – whether it’s an era, a colour palette pulled from arelevant source, or aconnection with local history.’
What are his recent projects? For the past couple of years, Morris has been busy working with the singer Jessie Ware on renovating her Edwardian house. ‘We started at the height of her disco period, so we went all-out on 1970s references,’ he explains. ‘The kitchen was inspired by Nigella Lawson’s
stainless-steel space in her early 1990s TV series, mixed with dark wood, 1950s Italian furniture and a custom-made dining table by Matthew Cox.’
The studio has also just finished Barnaby Bars, a shop on London’s St Martin’s Lane that sells artisan chocolate bars, which are made by hand in store (it opens this April). ‘ We’ve done everything from the brand identity to the interior architecture,’ says Morris. ‘The design was inspired by the arts & crafts architecture of Cadbury’s Bournville town, and the aesthetic of the Quaker movement – Q
