Joe Robinson was planning to meet Robert Kime the very week that the legendary English decorator, collector, dealer, and AD100 Hall of Famer passed away in 2022 at the age of 76. “Hearing people talk about him in such an inspirational way, I feel like I missed out enormously,” Robinson, the head of house sales and private collections at Dreweatts, tells AD PRO. However, Kime’s relationship with Dreweatts was longstanding, and the Berkshire auction house has been entrusted with Robert Kime: The Personal Collection—a monumental live sale (think 918 lots in total) spanning across three days beginning October 4.
The harmonious interiors that Kime orchestrated for the likes of King Charles III and Andrew Lloyd Webber captivated with their elegant looks and the calming aura they elicited. His savvy for fusing seemingly contrarian but always inviting elements was profound, and his two abodes—an urban retreat on Warwick Square in London’s Pimlico district and a historic pile in the South of France—were just as thoughtfully layered.
The residences teem with treasures that Kime amassed on his motley sojourns (he was particularly besotted with textiles), and the auction will spotlight hundreds of those of one-of-a-kind items, from Arts and Crafts furniture to Islamic ceramics, offering attendees the coveted chance to behold something that once held great meaning for Kime.
He was “one of those incredibly original and rare interior decorators whose aesthetic was not driven by instantaneous gratification,” says Robinson. Instead he was propelled by intuition, buying what he loved and living with it. The result was the accumulation of a vast and intriguing trove of objects that illuminated cultural traditions.
London interior designer Nina Campbell, who became one of Kime’s good friends following a serendipitous airplane conversation, concurs that his intimate approach to crafting spaces is what made him stand out. “I think what was so great about his taste is that he actually didn’t believe in taste or design,” she says. “You went to his home, and it was comfortable. It didn’t scream at you.” Antiques as precious as 18th-century chairs were meant to be used and enjoyed—never taken too preciously, she shares. “He wore his knowledge lightly and never jammed it down your throat, but you sort of seemed to leave feeling more intelligent than when you had arrived.”
Kime’s masterful mixing of antique textiles, furniture, and art is evidenced in the London home’s entry. The William Nedham painting, Italian walnut cassone, and 18th-century Rouen two-handle urn are among the lots featured in day one of the live sale.
The sitting room’s George II oak and marble side table, as well the assemblage of objet atop it, will be featured in the auction.
In the study, an oil painting by William Joseph Julius Caesar Bond (dated 1901) backdrops a Savernake armchair by Robert Kime Ltd. and a circa-1760 George III mahogany cockpen armchair.
Items weathered and worn culminate in the dining room, including a late Victorian red leather armchair by Howard & Sons styled with a Sindh embroidered cushion.
In the primary bedroom, a four-poster bed painted in green and parcel gilt is canopied in the Devon-printed fabric by Robert Kime Ltd.
Dating back to 1800, a Mughul silk-embroidered cushion cover is framed in gold and suspended over and Arts and Crafts mahogany centre table by Morris & Co.
Chinese silk drawings decorate the London homes turquoise cloakroom.
In the guest bedroom, a pair of Delft vases converted into lamps settle on the oak bedside tables, while Roger Fry’s View of a Woman in an Interior oil painting hangs above the bed.
When Robinson walked into Warwick Square for the first time, he was struck by its scale. “It was so impressive, but it had nothing to do with the grandeur; it was the scale of vision for something so livable and beautiful. It was almost a gallery for the objects. The walls, doors, and handles were all so sublimely subtle.”
From Pimlico, there are such glorious lots as a late 17th-century stool swathed in fringed Turkish floral upholstery, an 18th-century carved giltwood mantel mirror from northern Italy, an arresting glaze-front George I bookcase carved out of oak, and a Japanese Imari vase transformed into a lamp. Considering that Kime placed little importance on the monetary value of these pieces and focused instead on how well they married together, some of them are as accessibly priced as the rooms he brought to life—like a fluted Venetian flagon, a gilt and polychrome painted panel from India, and an emblazoned piece of Xenon ware.
Day two of the auction will showcase the furniture, art, and objet collected in La Gonette, Kime’s manor house nestled in the French Alps.
A Caucasian dragon fragmentary carpet from the 17th century hangs in the sun-drenched entry, while a Romanesque carved corner capital settles along the staircase.
A striped Victorian ebonised armchair and a George II painted pine side table assemble in front of Pierre Humbert’s Le Grand Collet.
In the kitchen, a set of painted beech dining chairs pull up to the marble-top rosewood center table.
An 18th-century English grey painted pine dresser defines the country kitchen, decorated with a collected assemblage that includes a French red pottery slipware and a tole peinte tea canister lamp.
Flanked by a pair of Chinese Archaic-style bronze vase table lamps, a late-Victorian Howard & Sons sofa and a Robert Kime Ltd. box ottoman are positioned below English painter T.B.W. Forster’s Llancaut Crags, River Wye and Severn.
In a guest bedroom, a set of leather half-bound volumes of Monasticon Anglicanum, published 1830, are stored in a 20th-century mahogany bookcase. Nearby, a circa-1710 Queen Anne mirror hangs above the fireplace.
It was Michael Trapp, the Connecticut-based designer and antique and architectural fragment dealer, who introduced Kime and his late wife, author Helen Nicoll, to La Gonette in Provence. “It belonged to Parisian friends of mine, and it was an absolute ruin,” he says of the 17th-and-18th-century manor house. Despite its decrepit, fire-marred state, the Kimes fell in love with it. In 1999, they acquired the then roofless home. They hired architect Mary-Lou Arscott to restore its magic before Kime enlivened it with heaps of carpets and plants.
“When it was done, it was as if time had stopped. It was ancient, quiet, and as if nothing had been touched,” says Trapp. He describes the interiors as “peaceful and giving,” and says that “every time you went there, it was restorative.”
The La Gonette portion of the Dreweatts sale spans an early 20th-century rattan armchair paired with a pine cricket table painted in red, a duo of ash and elm tables designed by Robert Lorimer, and cast-iron baskets plucked from the walled garden. “Robert had a curious mind. Wherever we went and traveled, he was always looking, taking something old and reimagining it, giving it a new reference point so that it became a little bit more modern,” says Trapp. “He played one thing against another and created an atmosphere.”
