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Rolling back the years in the East End

The basement table of Pedro da Costa Felgueiras’s east London home looks like a still-life painting. A glistening triangle of membrillo on a wooden board, two enamel mugs and a silver teapot sit atop a utilitarian cloth. The only concession to modernity is Felgueiras’s laptop (he’s studying an online course in agriculture). The table itself is 18th-century and was found in the basement when he bought the house 12 years ago.

I was steeped in this aesthetic from an early age and it stuck with me

Felgueiras refills the teapot with water from a stove-top kettle and pours us both a cup of fermented chai from his favourite tea emporium in Lisbon, where he is from. “Growing up, I was surrounded by historic buildings,” he recalls. “My mother’s office was this big, baroque building in the main square; the school I went to had this ancient stone staircase and courtyards; even my local church was an old palace. I was steeped in this aesthetic from an early age and it stuck with me.”

Felgueiras is an expert in Oriental and European lacquer and historic paint techniques. He studied interior design and art history in Portugal before moving to London at the age of 19 to study the conservation of decorative surfaces. His mentor, Margaret Ballardie, a specialist in Asian lacquerwork, encouraged his interest in historic paint and together, they began to research and recreate historic recipes using alchemical ingredients.

In 1995, he founded Lacquer Studios and began accepting commissions, including the reinstatement of 80 missing dragons that originally adorned the roofs of the Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens; the restoration of all the decorative schemes of Horace Walpole’s summer villa, Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham; and artists Gilbert and George’s residence in Spitalfields.

His work in Spitalfields brought Felgueiras to the attention of Tim Whittaker, director of the Spitalfields Trust. In 2005, Whittaker had saved 10 houses on Varden Street from the wrecking ball and was acting as an estate agent on behalf of the London Development Agency, which owned the properties. He approached Felgueiras, who was initially underwhelmed by the dilapidated, four-storey building being offered for sale. Built in the early 1800s, it hadn’t been occupied for 20 years, and came with no electricity, no roof and few original features.

Gradually, Felgueiras began to recreate its interior with cast-iron fireplaces found on eBay, cobblestones salvaged from building sites and floorboards from reclamation yards. Everything feels like it belongs.

“What I’m doing isn’t special,” says Felgueiras, modestly. “You can bring old houses to the 21st century – you just have to think about things.” He shows me the fridge, hidden behind a cupboard under the stairs. There’s also underfloor heating beneath the flagstones in the basement kitchen, which he dug out to increase the ceiling height.

The kitchen/dining room leads to a secluded courtyard garden. Twelve years ago this was a patch of tarmac: today it boasts a topiary peacock and espaliered apple trees. A carpet of small, bright green leaves spreads through the cracks in the paving stones. When a surveyor came to value the house, he remarked upon the structural stability of what he thought was a 200-year-old potting shed, unable to believe it had only recently been built.

For Felgueiras, the Varden Street house is a testing ground for his work on historic interiors. In the hallway, a deep, royal blue is set against murky green woodwork. In the reception rooms, pale lilac is paired with woodwork painted in warm stone. In the kitchen, ochre cabinetry brightens the dark space. Outside, the red oxide used on the window frames of his potting shed remains as rich as the day it was painted, more than a decade ago.

While the colours in his home are rooted in English history, Felgueiras has “let himself be more Portuguese” with the decorative items. A menagerie of ceramic animal heads line the walls of his back porch and in the reception room, two Portuguese ceramic monkeys hang out under a glass vitrine watched over by a row of photographs of “18th-century men with beards”. The rooms also contain Felgueiras’s own furniture, including lacquered side tables and mirrors that combine Georgian shapes with modernist patterns. Upstairs, the simple, four-poster beds and bedroom chairs are also his own designs.

Having spent years creating the interiors of Varden Street, Felgueiras is ready to make a new home. He’s moving back to Portugal, to a farm with 80 hectares that he plans to run as a rural retreat. The land is gradually being cleared of eucalyptus and replanted with cork and fruit trees. “The funny thing is, the project won’t really happen in my lifetime,” he says. “It will take 135 years to develop fully.” He doesn’t seem to mind that, yet again, his work belongs to a different century.

Past master

How to make paint in the traditional way

In a converted garage in Hoxton, Pedro Da Costa Felgueiras creates forgotten hues prevalent throughout the 18th century. His paints are made from obscure, alchemical ingredients. Take caput mortuum, for example – a pigment the colour of dried blood. Nowadays, it is made from a common iron oxide known as hermaitie. In the 16th and 17th century, however, it is believed to have been derived from ground-up mummies.

Felgueiras sources his pigments from Europe and South America. One – blue verditer – is made by ‘an eccentric gentleman’ in Nottingham, who arduously stirs batches of copper carbonate before burying them in the ground to fix the colour. The pigments are ground by hand using a pestle. They are then mixed with linseed oil if they are being applied to timber or, if being applied to plasterwork, they are mixed into a traditional rabbit-skin glue distemper.

Off the charts: vibrant red paint by Pedro Da Costa Felgueiras.
Off the charts: vibrant red paint by Pedro Da Costa Felgueiras. Photograph: Terry Mapstone/Alamy

Felgueiras describes some historic pigments as ‘fugitive’ – their colour can alter over time. ‘For example, the blue I used on the timber of my staircase changed rapidly because I used indigo blue,’ he explains. ‘It was mixed with linseed oil, which yellowed rapidly, turning the blue to green.’

Felgueiras remains resolutely uninterested in ‘endless’ colour charts. ‘Colour isn’t the same as pigment,’ he says. ‘Colour is something you can get from any paint shop. If you’re talking about historical colours, that’s a very different conversation, because you are limited by the pigments and the technology that was available at the time.’ Experimenting within those limitations is what defines his mercurial craft. It’s all done instinctively.

‘I love the fact that mixing up those pigments is quite hard work,’ he says. ‘That’s the part I enjoy – the hard work. Not because it’s difficult, but because it’s different. I don’t like faking it,’ he explains. ‘I actually like doing the real thing.’

lacquerstudios.com