Antiques dealer Alex MacArthur has a weakness for the historic and forgotten.
Photography courtesy of Alex MacArthur Interiors.
Three years ago, MacArthur relocated her celebrated showroom in Brighton, England, an hour-and-a-half east along the English Channel to the town of Rye, where she took ownership of the Austin Friary, a Grade II crumbling stone compound on a hill off the High Street.
“So it’s a fascinating mix of centuries-old monastic and brutal industrial,” says MacArthur.
Open by appointment, the chapel is marked with MacArthur’s discreet nameplate and an eight-pointed star, “a symbol of redemption and new beginnings.”
MacArthur grew up in Scotland and ran away from home at 16; she got her start in the trade back in the 1980s by assisting her furniture restorer Italian boyfriend.
Her tastes are catholic: The monastery offerings span the centuries up to the present and fill a collection of rooms both intimate and gargantuan.
The chapel has a soaring openwork ceiling and 1907 factory-style windows that face bricked-up 14th-century tracery windows.
Centuries-old panther skeletons are displayed alongside a modernist armchair and suspended landscape painting by Dion Salvador Lloyd, one of a group of contemporary artists who MacArthur represents.
Lit by a vintage movie light, Quinn, MacArthur’s harlequin Great Dane, poses with French bull dog, Mimi, who is perched on 1960s leather chair by Chinese designer Kwok Hoi Chan.
A series of mezzanines and annexes branch off the chapel.
MacArthur rents the spaces as locations for shoots of all sorts, and her dogs stand by as ready models.
“Rye Trawler,” a painting by contemporary British artist Andrew Viner, is displayed in one of the ancillary spaces.
Another Andrew Viner marine study hangs between a train rack and metal porch settee. MacArthur sees the ongoing restoration of the structure as a lifetime project.