A labour of love

Antony was drawn to the property’s original features, such as the ornate plasterwork in the sitting room and the large bay window, where a 19th-century marble-topped guéridon table takes centre stage, flanked by wing chairs in Zoffany Verdure fabric in Tapestry Green.

When Antony Olivier Duthie first saw Inchbonny, a country house in the Scottish borders, the attraction was two-fold. He was living in nearby Edinburgh at the time, so this Georgian pile, with its extensive land and river frontage, offered the kind of antidote to urban life that he’d been craving, and also presented an ideal restoration project. The house hadn’t been touched since the 1950s and was in obvious need of renovation, but it retained a strong sense of its history, with many original features still intact and ripe for sympathetic restoration.

One remarkable feature of the property’s past is its continuity of ownership. ‘The house had actually been in the same family right up until I bought it in 2012,’ says Antony. ‘So, including myself, it’s only ever been owned by two families.’ The previous owners were the Veitch family, whose ancestors built Inchbonny in the early 19th century and, though its roots are Georgian, a significant remodelling in the 1890s has given the building a distinctly Victorian feel. Prominent local architect JP Allison was responsible for much of the work – a fact that earned the house C-listed status, and added to the challenge of Antony’s project, as consents had to be sought for many of his changes and reconfigurations. But, with one eye firmly on preserving the historic features, Antony persevered, determined that the house and its layout should also work in a modern context.

This juxtaposition of historic grandeur and contemporary living is a theme that persists through the interior. Antony has eclectic tastes and Inchbonny’s lavishly decorated rooms are testament to this; each one is filled with antiques, but there are interjections of contemporary style throughout: Ralph Lauren leopard print covers antique chairs, and pops of bright colour are striking against the gilts and browns of older pieces. ‘Instinctively I go for maximalism,’ he muses. ‘Although, more specifically, it’s a kind of structured maximalism, with a contemporary twist here and there.’

The grand scale of the house has allowed Antony’s maximalist tendencies to flourish: ‘It’s a lo