PERIOD PIECE

HARRODS…

and the great Victoria and Albert Museum are just a short distance away, but things couldn’t be quieter in this Georgian-style South Kensington townhouse. As renovated by London-based architect Jennifer Jammaers and interior designer Alice B. Davies (during Davies’s time as creative director of the firm Minale + Mann), it is a marvel of serenity. Sure, Jammaers and Davies rebuilt the main stairway, to make the house’s upper floors easy to reach, and extended the kitchen into the rear yard. But otherwise their work is practically invisible.

THEY PRESERVED…

as many original details as they could, and added modern elements that are strikingly elegant but never compete for attention. Dark, moody and self-effacing, the interiors are difficult to categorize as new or old. The team accomplished that, in part, by not trying to blend one period into another. Take the master bathroom — to keep eras from meeting awkwardly, they commissioned a marble-and-steel shower unit and marble basin that read as freestanding pieces of furniture. What was there before remains unchanged.

MAKING THE ROOMS…

feel timeless required attention to every surface. In the master bath, walls are painted Farrow & Ball Railings; the ceiling painted is the same company’s Skimming Stone. Parquet floors are in the mansion-weave pattern from Walking on Wood, a London company that also has a New York outpost. Running the same floor from bedroom to bath makes the suite feel continuous and spacious. Brass hardware, lighting by Belgian architect Hans Verstuyft, and simple linens add to the feeling that this could be now — or then.