A KIND OF MAGIC

At Christmas, an exuberance of flowers and foliage beautifully chimes with hand-painted wallpapers in Hannah Cecil Gurney's home

- RACHEL LEEDHAM

A visit to this house in London cannot fail to ignite a sense of childlike curiosity. A glimpse of the sitting room reveals amazing Indian river scenes, with elephants drinking from the banks and tigers lurking in the long grass. Upstairs, flamingos gaze serenely from the bathroom walls, while fantastical scenes of London in the lower ground-floor playroom include a toad riding a penny-farthing as a whale glides down the Thames, watched by monkeys on lampposts. Small wonder that play dates in this house are in high demand.

This is the world of Hannah Cecil Gurney, co-director of hand-painted wallpaper company de Gournay, which she runs with her sister, Rachel, and father and founder of the company, Claud. Hannah, who shares her home with her husband Eddie Harden and their children – George, six, twins Oscar and Scarlet, three, and Cecily, four months – puts her creative streak down to travelling the world for de Gournay to meet artists and designers. ‘The thing about decorating is that the more you see, the more you build up a scrapbook in your mind,’ she notes.