Kaffe Fassett: ‘I grew up in Orson Welles’s log cabin but I’ve put down roots in London’
Kaffe Fassett MBE, 86, is an American-born British-based artist well known for his colourful designs in knitting, needlepoint and patchwork.
He has designed knitwear for Missoni and his unique garments have been commissioned and collected by Barbra Streisand, Lauren Bacall, John Schlesinger, Ali MacGraw, Shirley MacLaine and H.R.H. Princess Michael of Kent.
In 1988, Kaffe became the first living textile artist to have a one-man show at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Today he lives in London with his partner, designer and author Brandon Mably.
What attracted you to your home?
The street was lined with London plane trees, which I love. This year they didn’t cut the branches back so we’re getting wonderful big circles of green leaves.
When I first came to this house I lived in just one flat that was part of the property. I had bought it from an American friend who had moved over here with her child. It’s a wonderful semi-detached Edwardian house in Kilburn, which was quite a way from the centre of town, I felt. Now it seems in the middle of everything.
The landlord’s agents tried to have me evicted because they said I was running a business here. The judge asked, “Why do you think they’re running a business?” He said, “Because there are filing cabinets”, ignoring piles of yarn I had. The fact that he tried to evict me made me buy the whole house at a knock-down price because they couldn’t get rid of me then. The people who had the other flats moved out.
It’s four storeys – three, really, with an attic – with lots of storage. We produce a lot of knitting and patchwork quilts and tons of fabric prints; so that all gets stored.
What does ‘home’ mean to you?
As an artist I want beautiful light, which this house really gets. Across the street are pale buildings that get struck by light and that reflects into the house, too. It’s very nice because as an artist I don’t want direct light.
In the afternoon in my painting studio I get light flooding in and it’s too much. If I have a still-life set up I can’t really paint from it because it’s too distorted. But the lovely soft light in the morning is gorgeous. I try not to make colour decisions at night in electric light, between shades of yarn or fabric.
Do you have a favourite room?
The room most people comment on is my bathroom. I knew a wonderful potter [Rupert Spira] when I was setting up the house. He made the most beautiful tiles but had piles of rejected tiles if something had gone wrong in the glaze. So you’d get two or three colours in a glaze rather than a solid green tile, such as green and red, and I loved that.
I grabbed all those mistake tiles and made the most incredible floor. And I had him make me a beautiful punch bowl for a sink with stripes of red and green and things like that. The house gets used a lot for photography and has lots of working areas for painting and things.
What was your childhood home like?
My childhood home was a rustic log cabin in Big Sur, California which Orson Welles sold to my father. It was very wild when we first moved to this little community: no electricity, lots of rattlesnakes and bobcats. I remember running water but it was very sparse, lit with candles and kerosene lamps. Eventually we got a generator before electricity came down the coast and everybody got it.
Orson Welles was married to Rita Hayworth and he’d bought the cabin for her but she never really moved in – he went and measured for curtains but never came back. My parents built this amazing restaurant, Nepenthe, attached to the house, which became world-famous. It had 150 staff and people still visit it from all over the world. My father founded a magazine listing cultural happenings on the Monterey Peninsula and knew a lot of society people.
How many properties have you lived in?
About seven. I had a place in San Francisco, one in New York and a place in Boston, all at different times. Then I moved to this country and had a flat in Lansdowne Crescent in Notting Hill before moving to this house. I also have part-ownership of a house in Hastings. I bought this house (where I am now) in 1978/79 for £25,000.
When they tried to throw me out of the flat here they wrote their proposal wrongly. The judge said, “You’ve made a grammatical error, which means you have to pay Mr Fassett’s expenses.” They said, “Can’t you overlook this?” He said “My dear man, this is a court of law.” It was so dramatic. I was terrified I was going to get moved on. When I came home I said, “Well, you’re stuck with me now so let me buy the house.” So they sold it to me.
What was the first property you bought?
A house in Boston in the late ’50s. It was a beautiful four-storey stone house, Gothic-looking with five or six bedrooms, a big house with 11 garages they rented out.
It was in a run-down area and when I went to see if it was for sale I asked a little boy in the street, “Is this house empty?” He said, “Just a minute, I’ll check.” He picked up a rock, threw it, smashing a window and said, “Yeah, it’s empty.”
So, very nervously, I bought it, paying $3,000 ($35,000 today) because it had been foreclosed to a bank that said, “Just pay the back-expenses on it and you can have it.”
Do you garden?
No, but Brandon’s a terrific gardener. And we hire help from time to time when it gets over-wild. Now it’s that wonderful spring into summer thing when everything’s coming up. The rose bushes are developing and bluebells have suddenly appeared. Bluebell woods in this country are one of the most magical things I’ve ever seen. Coming from California, I’m not used to this exquisite blueness.
We were given some nice old roses by a friend who grows them and there’s a rose named after me and camellias, hydrangeas, acers and a patch of lawn with daisies growing on it which I mow. We’ve got a back terrace that I’ve covered with interesting old Victorian and colourful tiles. I covered the whole back wall with mosaics. It’s a suntrap at the back of the house, so even on a cool day you can sit out in the fresh air.
What is your approach to furnishing?
I never took the furnishing seriously. When Brandon came along he said, “For God’s sake, you’ve got to get a couch. And let’s put a carpet down. We have all these carpets rolled up in the back room.” He civilised the house. Also I’ve done books on interiors here and I’d completely wallpaper or change a space ready for photography then change it back to living areas.
What’s your favourite possession?
I have a collection of laughing Buddhas, covered with little children, and lots of china I really enjoy.
Where would you live if you had to move?
When I walk around London I see areas that look intriguing. I’d love the idea of living on Hampstead Heath so I can walk on to the heath and swim in the ponds; I used to do that all through the winter. They’d break through the ice for us with an oar and we’d jump into this jagged hole. I heard about an old woman – I thought she was old, 82 – who walked five miles to swim every morning through the winter. I thought if that old stick can do it, I can. Television producer Anne James did a series on me [Glorious Colour, Channel 4] and got me started. She drove me there every morning. It was fantastic: I never had a cold for years when doing that.
Have you done DIY?
I’m not terribly good at DIY because I’m not a details person. I love to start projects but hate finishing them. I love the idea of stripping down a room and getting excited about what could happen in it; then I lose interest.
Your best and worst experiences with contractors?
Best: the laying of the tiles on the bathroom floor. Worst: we hired this cowboy guy and his son who made a complete balls-up of the back place. They got the electricity wrong and started a fire that nearly burnt the house down.
Has your home presented problems?
We’ve had skylights put in at the back of the house and they leak a bit. And there was a period when they were very worried about part of the house falling down. I think they decided it was settling in a funny way and was going to collapse. I remember lots of boards on the front and firemen running around saying, “For God’s sake don’t go into the front of the house for a bit!”
Has your home produce any nice surprises?
The nice surprise about it being an old house is learning its quirks, how it works; and their proportions are nice. When I go into modern houses I don’t like the proportions and the shape of doors seems kind of mean. I love the old world, the proportions of old rooms and the sounds: an old house kind of creaks and moves. It’s cranky sometimes, getting used to realising you’re not being crept up on by ghosts. If you hear noises, it’s just the house settling.
Kaffe Fassett’s Brilliant Little Patchwork Collection will be published in June, and his Quilts on an English Farm will be launched at The Festival of Quilts 2024 in Birmingham, in August.
More information about the house can be found in Kaffe Fassett in the Studio, published by Abrams.
