Amy Dennis and Neville Rae's Artistic Edinburgh Home
Photography courtesy of The Modern House. Amy Dennis studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art and then went on to work in curatorial roles before returning to painting full time. (Go to The Modern House for an interview with the pair.). In 2014, the two bought the ground-floor flat of an 1890 Victorian townhouse in Portobello, a coastal suburb of Edinburgh. Many of our design choices are informed by…not having a large budget but getting materials to do the very most possible by revealing them, finishing them, making objects carefully. The Victorian townhouse was divided into two apartments in the 1980s. The new extension in the back, added in 2017, now houses the kitchen. The couple—with Balthus, their blue whippet—relax in their new kitchen. Neville fabricated the cabinets; the doors are made from an engineered colored wood called Valchromat. The couple, again playing with contrasts, chose to keep the palette dark and muted in the room that gets the most natural light. The path from the living room to the kitchen moves from dark to light with a large angled skylight that bridges the high Victorian ceiling in the... ...living room to the lower Douglas fir rafters in the kitchen a transition that works really well as you see this interesting composition from the living room The TV cabinet (designed to look like a dartboard) and Donald Judd-like plywood sofas were DIY’ed by Neville. We started using it sparingly and accumulatively, starting with door handles,” explains Neville. On removing a wall of plasterboard in the living room we discovered the original range hearth and an incredible large stone surround that is blackened... ...with bitumen and has a line of sculptural tooled marks The walls here are just the standard multi finish skimmed plaster which dries a lovely pink Amy s art studio which on occasion acts as exhibit space is in the front of the home Displayed in the... ...pigeonhole cubbies salvaged from a local mechanic s garage are works by artists Ben Arnup Brent Millar James Rigler and George Wyllie The furniture in this room is mostly secondhand. The trellis window blinds, made by Neville, were inspired by window screens spotted in Spitalfields. The green steel cabinet was bought from the local community hall. The painting on the mantel is byOrkney artist Sylvia Wishart; on the green armoire is art by Scottish painter Barbara Balmer. The window in the main bedroom glimpses out onto the new addition. “We thought it would be fun to paint a bedhead [headboard] inspired by the artist Oswaldo Licini’s bedroom in Italy.”