The De Waal piece would be enough, in terms of living with treasures. You see it and sigh. But no, upstairs a floor, in the study where Slater writes, sitting at an elm desk he spotted in a second-hand shop in Tokyo, are two tiny and exquisite Gerhard Richters, as well as a pair of 17th-century Flemish portraits by Jan van Ravesteyn. (‘It was only once I got them home’, Slater recalls, ‘that I realised I’d bought my mum and dad.’) Upstairs again, in the drawing room, hum two Richard Serras, a work on paper by Kazuo Shiraga, several Howard Hogkins, a Rachel Whiteread Medicine Cabinet, a collection of hand-raised tea bowls by Ryoji Koie and, on a bowed wooden table (‘just an old second-hand one’), a Jennifer Lee pot. In his bathroom is a Nan Goldin photograph; another hangs in his bedroom.
Roses, a rambling wisteria and pots of clipped ‘Ilex crenata’ frame this snatched view of the food writer’s ground-floor work kitchen, which was designed by John Pawson and built by the Belgian company Obumex
But look anywhere in this house - this perfect, beautiful house (late Georgian, built by Thomas Cubitt, the best in its quiet terrace in Highbury) - and you have to blink twice. Before Slater took it over in 2000 it had, appropriately enough, served as an art gallery (as well as a hospice and a slum). But for all that it’s full of museum-worthy pieces, what Slater has created is a home - a comfortable one too - rather than a showpiece. It’s a place for someone who lives and works and writes and cooks and gardens (the garden, designed by Dan Pearson, is as beautiful as you might imagine), but chooses to do so in an impeccable environment surrounded by treasured objects.
This Japanese-elm desk, found in a second-hand shop in Tokyo, is where Slater sits down to write in the light cast by a late 1920s Poul Henningsen lamp. The chair is from Howe in Pimlico Road
Slater also cleans. ‘It gives me a break from writing,’ he explains. ‘How else do you stop doing something which otherwise is never done?’ He laughs. He’s right, of course, but many writers employ a cleaner for a few hours a week. I think another reason he does his own scrubbing and dusting is because, as well as being the house’s owner and curator, he is also its housekeeper. He has a relationship with it, and it’s a working one, constantly evolving. He wrote in every room before deciding where to put his study, and slept in several before claiming a bedroom. He waited for ages, happy with his John Pawson kitchen, before tackling the basem*nt, and it was only when he took down panels of chipboard and discovered two enormous fireplaces that he thought: ah yes, a kitchen; a different one, with a different feel, for a different purpose. And thus two kitchens make perfect sense.
He takes a similar approach with paint and colour. ‘It was a headache to get right,’ he reports about the colours he’s chosen, which include an inky blue for his dressing room, a black bathroom and bedroom, and a warm tobacco colour - Edward Bulmer’s ‘Trumpington’ - for a guest room. The rest of the house is a range of carefully nuanced neutrals. How did he figure it all out? ‘I started by painting the whole house white,’ he says, ‘and then went at it bit by bit. I made a lot of mistakes. I love paint, but its texture is as important to me as its colour.’ The deeply matt shades that run throughout the house are mostly by Bulmer or Atelier Ellis. We repaint the whole house every five to seven years or so,’ Slater adds cheerfully.
‘Source of River’ by Kazuo Shiraga forms an eye-catcher of sorts beyond the Rose Uniacke sofas and two Axel Vervoordt ottomans. Against the chimney breast is an old cabinet that the owner picked up in Tokyo and has used to rehouse Rachel Whiteread’s ‘Medicine Cabinet’
A c1642 portrait by the Dutch court painter Jan van Ravesteyn, bought from the Weiss Gallery in Jermyn Street, London, hangs above the fireplace in the dining room. In the centre is a ‘Drapers’ table by Rose Uniacke, which is topped with a bulbous Rachel Whiteread ceramic and flanked by two Benchmark benches
In the drawing room, a solitary pot by Jennifer Lee sits on an antique bow-front console table. In its inky monotone, the framed Japanese prayer that hangs above them echoes the Richard Serra work over the fireplace in the distance\
Edward Bulmer and Cassandra Ellis are important to Slater in terms of his aesthetic. So was Maureen Doherty, and so is the perfumer Lyn Harris (the right scent of the right hand soap in the right bottle is crucial to him), and so is Rose Uniacke. ‘I’ve soaked up so much knowledge from these people,’ he says. ‘It was Rose who taught me that you don’t need 15 things on a mantelpiece. You don’t even need five. Just one. So it can sing. There’s a huge peace about her work, which I love. There’s a grandness too, but it’s quite humble; quite simple. Also,’ he adds, ‘she is great with fabrics.’ But for all the Uniacke furniture in the house, the beautiful paint, the large collection of De Waals, this is Slater’s place, all of a piece, put together by him, ‘inch by inch’, over many years.
Slater has never quite got round to upholstering the stripped-to-its-hessian chair in the adjoining bedroom, an antique-shop find along with the walnut chest of drawers, which is topped with another Edmund de Waal bowl
