LONDON — If there’s anyone who knows about swanky interiors, it’s Viscount David Linley, who grew up at Kensington Palace, visited his aunt Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and is no stranger to the royal family’s estates dotted around Britain.
A cabinetmaker by trade and founder of Linley, the London furniture brand with retail stores on Pimlico Road and Albemarle Street, Linley has just set up an in-house, bespoke interior design service.
“We did it to meet customer demand and use our design skills to the full,” said Linley, who will create custom-made furniture as part of the service.
Since he founded the company 21 years ago, Linley’s signature has been wooden furniture with marquetry, the 17th-century decorative technique featuring thin layers of different colored woods.
“What fascinates me is the creative process. I remember standing in Zandra Rhodes’ cutting room as a little boy and deciding that my life goal was to make things — tangible, durable objects that would endure,” he said.
Linley and his team have created suites for Claridges Hotel in London — one in very traditional English style, and another with an Art Deco feel — and for the Kempinski Hotel in Moscow. Recent commissions include the restaurant at the Goring Hotel near London’s Victoria Station, an apartment in Norman Foster’s Chesa Futura building in Saint Moritz and the restaurant at London’s Sloane Club. For each project, Linley’s team draws from the company’s own stash of furniture and wooden objects, as well as from outside sources. The team works alongside an architect or project manager. Although Linley, son of the late Princess Margaret and the photographer Lord Snowdon, may have grown up in utterly grand surroundings, his approach is eclectic and offbeat — much like his father’s.
Snowdon had his own ideas about how to live at Kensington Palace. “My father restored the apartment and put in modern interiors, Sixties Danish furniture and big hi-fi speakers. Yes, it was a palace, but it didn’t feel like one.”