Shoe designer Jacqueline Mercer’s vintage-filled London home

By Christianne Raymer

Published: Saturday, 16 July 2022 at 12:00 am

How does a fashion professional transfer her design skills to her home? You just need to peek into the colourful abode of shoe designer Jacqueline Mercer to see it’s clearly second nature to some. With gallery walls decorated with a mix of witty prints, floral oil paintings and whimsical one-offs, to open shelving crammed with collections of pottery, glassware and ceramics, she’s an interiors natural.

‘I would say I am a very visual person, and always have been,’ says Jacqueline. ‘I actually originally wanted to be a fine artist specialising in painting or work in ceramics, but when I was at art college I panicked, and when I discovered a degree in shoe design it seemed perfect for me. My artsy background probably explains so much of what you see in the house. Also, the more you do design, the better you get at developing ideas.’

The house did not start as a blank canvas awaiting a few pretty tweaks. With an overgrown garden, cluttered hallways and boarded-up back windows, it was a bit of a wreck. Looking beyond its dilapidated state to its potential as the sunny family home it has become, Jacqueline says it was the spacious proportions of the rooms and the location in a well-connected area of London, as well as the fact it had off-street parking, which sold it to them.

With its south-facing aspect and large Edwardian windows, the house is bright and sunny at any time of the day. ‘We realised how light the house was when we started to decorate and decided to go with white walls everywhere because there was no way to tell what colours would work with the light. I often think about adding more colour, but now I feel the white really works,’ says Jacqueline. It also provides the ideal backdrop for her artworks and her many colourful ceramics and knick-knacks, such as her collection of vintage Japanese Kokeshi dolls on the living room mantelpiece.

Around the house, Jacqueline has created gallery walls to display the pictures she has collected over the years from the market stalls and antiques shops that she loves around Portobello Road or bought on Etsy. ‘Behind the sofa they are mainly paintings, so I’ve kept them together. Elsewhere it’s a mix of prints and even small things like greetings cards that I liked. It’s an eclectic mix and I love to contrast colours and styles of frames for interest.’

Jacqueline likes her furniture to have character. ‘I only buy things that mean something to me – it has to feel personal,’ she says. Most of it is vintage, picked up from antiques or second-hand shops or sourced from Etsy or eBay. Even in the bathroom she has avoided ‘your average bathroom storage’ by turning a mid-century sideboard into a vanity unit with a basin. ‘I wanted it to be a bit more like the rest of the house. Not just, here’s the bathroom, and it looks like every other bathroom.’

Jacqueline will buy new too, when she sees the right thing, pointing out a whimsical brass lamp, which came from Graham & Green. ‘I wouldn’t say I necessarily have one style,’ she says. ‘It’s just whatever grabs my attention and somehow it all seems to work together.’

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Jacqueline’s sunny Edwardian three-bedroom end of terrace in Finsbury Park, north London.
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When Jacqueline hangs a gallery wall, she starts with the largest works and builds around them, keeping the smaller pieces to place in the gaps. The paintings come from markets and galleries found through Etsy. The orange velvet sofa is from Habitat and the vintage lamp and base came from Les Couilles du Chien antiques shop on Golborne Road.
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Jacqueline started collecting vintage Japanese Kokeshi dolls when she discovered some in a shop in Broadway Market. She has sourced many from Etsy, her favourite place to shop online.
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Yellow vintage vase from In The Garden, a plant shop close to Portobello Market, one of Jacqueline’s favourite hunting grounds.
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Jacqueline found her dining table in a vintage shop in Deal, Kent, where she and her husband like to go for interiors shopping and a break from London. The chairs are vintage Ercol and were bought on eBay. The print on the wall of Debbie Harry is by graffiti artist Pure Evil.
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The plant-filled kitchen looks out onto the garden. Much of their budget for doing up the house was spent on big-ticket items in the kitchen such as the concrete worktops, solid wood kitchen cabinets and the Ligne Roset lights from Heal’s that hang over the island. The kitchen cabinets were from British Standard and are painted in Hague Blue from Farrow & Ball.
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This space doubles up as a bit of a greenhouse, with the glass making it the ideal place to grow plants. The wall-mounted planters are from West Elm.
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Jacqueline has put her favourite armchair in a sunny spot by the French windows that lead out to the garden.
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The cast-iron spindles on the stairs are painted in Old School Blue by Little Greene, which creates a striking contrast with the fresh white on the walls. Jacqueline has created a gallery wall that extends from the ground floor to the first floor and is hung with a mix of original artworks, vintage maps and prints.
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In the master bedroom, the Oscar bed by Matthew Hilton for SCP and the mustard throw came from Heal’s. The bedding is from The White Company.
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The nursery walls are painted in Setting Plaster from Farrow & Ball and the wallpaper on the feature wall is Woodlands Teal by Fleur Harris at Jimmy Cricket. The cot was an eBay buy and the canopy is by Numero 74 from Smallable. The framed pictures are from Max Made Me and Creative Studio Caro.
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The spare bedroom walls are painted in Dulux Trade White matt emulsion, and the bed frame came from eBay.
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Jacqueline found the candlestick at Angel and Boho and the Russian dolls were picked up on her travels.
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The couple fashioned a stylish bathroom storage unit by asking the builders to turn a mid-century sideboard from Mustard Vintage into the basin stand. The colours in the bathroom were inspired by the paintings of L.S. Lowry, who is one of Jacqueline’s favourite artists.