The return of the unfitted kitchen
The functional, glossy fitted kitchen of modern times is giving way to a less sanitised, more soulful vibe using freestanding, reclaimed pieces
Reclaimed floors and furniture in the south London home of interior designer Gavin Houghton
In 1977, the cookery writer Elizabeth David wrote an article in which she described her ideal kitchen. Her “fantasy” was a free-spirited fusion of beauty and utility — an overhead drying rack, ladles and whisks hanging by the cooker, and a few wooden spoons in a jar. “Like a painter’s studio furnished with cooking equipment”, as she put it. It was David’s riposte to the predictability of the fitted kitchen.
Almost half a century later fashion’s pendulum has swung back. Those glossy modular kitchens and behemoth islands basking in the glare of open-plan spaces — beloved of noughties designers — are ceding to cosier, more tactile interiors; conformist cabinetry replaced with an unfitted mix of old-fashioned armoires and butcher’s blocks, trestle tables and pottery-festooned dressers.
This is not just about nostalgia. A freestanding kitchen made from natural materials, which you can take with you when you move, is more friendly on the environment. “We’re all having to be clever about future-proofing, by using things that are flexible. It’s part of a backlash against that rip-it-out-and-start-again approach which has dominated design for too long,” says Maria Speake, co-founder of Retrouvius, a London-based architectural salvage and design company.
In Speake’s own kitchen, the splashbacks are made of old brass kick plates, screwed to the wall so they are easy to dislodge. Reclaimed haberdasher’s units with deep drawers, museum cabinets and small cupboards made of old picture frames inset with “twinkly” glass are her other favoured adaptable design devices.
“There was a moment when kitchens became very rigid — everything made from the same materials and at matching heights. I blame it on Modernism. But there are so many alternatives and they don’t have to be expensive,” says Speake. “We’ve moved on from that Jamie Oliver warehouse vibe, with your expensive equipment on display like trophies. Nowadays we want warmer finishes; pieces we can feel comfortable in. We only have to look back and the answers are there.”
A shift to the homespun also ties in with the rising interest in craft, fuelled by social media. “We’re all exposed to antiques and the handmade now. I think people want their kitchens to be places where they can display their finds — terracotta plates from the Balearics, confit pots from Provence — and connect with their chattels,” says Russell Pinch, a furniture maker whose understated pieces, in oak or walnut, draw on the hands-on making ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement.
“Even the most beautiful fitted kitchen can feel sanitised and impersonal. There’s a desire to break up that linearity with layers,” says Pinch. He finds that his larger pieces — a curved, timber-framed vitrine, dresser or armoire — are increasingly being used in kitchens. Slender, open shelving for art and exotica, and freestanding sideboards add to what he describes as “soulful” effect.
More recently, the rise of open-plan living in the noughties made the island a focal point. The more lavish the knock-through, the larger the island. “It’s a useful way to define a space, like a fourth wall — and somewhere to store everything,” says Anthony Earle, a designer at Artichoke. “At the start of the 21st century, the clutter-free, streamlined look became aspirational.” His Somerset-based company specialises in kitchens based on 18th and 19th-century craftsmanship: cabinet making, plasterwork and ironmongery. In more economically uncertain times, says Earle, “clients appreciate the atmosphere that traditional furniture . . . can bring to a kitchen”.
“There’s only so much Modernism the human spirit can bear,” says furniture maker Marcus Jacka of Non-Standard Studio on the edge of the North York Moors. “I’m seduced as much as the next person by clean lines and minimalism. But kitchens are about food, and that means sharing, companionship and warmth — not science and engineering,” says Jacka, who, ironically, is a former physicist. His own kitchen is a nonconformist combination of his own pieces made using traditional techniques for sprightly, modern effect, next to painted antiques with a 1940s dresser salvaged from an Royal Air Force headquarters.
Another chance find, an old tailor’s table complete with inset ruler, inspired Jacka to design an elegant alternative to the island. His version, with flaps, useful drawers and shapely legs, doubles as a dining table or chopping surface at an ergonomic height.
At Kelmscott Studio, in Gloucestershire, Jodey Collorick has developed “a sleight of hand” technique to design built-in kitchens that look as if they have settled gently in to place over time. Collorick, a designer and craftsman who began his career at classical kitchen maker Plain English, named his studio after William Morris’s publishing house. Like the Victorian designer and thinker, he believes a designer should know how things are made. “Instead of uniform elevations we design pieces at different heights so they don’t look mass produced. The proportions of our pieces . . . are based on traditional furniture.”
This works especially well for smaller spaces, says Collorick who also favours salvaged surfaces like reclaimed school lab worktops and old brass taps for butler’s sinks, perched on brick piers. “They can be a bit marked . . . but if you’re committed to the layered look it doesn’t matter.” The floor-to-ceiling cupboards, designed to resemble freestanding furniture, perch on classical feet. “They’re dust traps,” he concedes.
For interior designer Kate Cox of HÀM Interiors, a family-run practice known for its expressive, painterly rooms, the unfitted kitchen is a canvas for creativity. “As a designer you’re always trying to evoke a particular atmosphere. Rows of wall-mounted cupboards can be restrictive.” For her own kitchen in a Bristol apartment, Cox opted for a country-house feel, “a mix and match of things; with the slight sense of disorder that I find pleasing.”
Set on the first floor of a Georgian town house, artworks and glass gleam on open shelving next to oxblood red, below-counter drawers. “The argument for wall cupboards is storage,” says Cox. Her solution was the painted corner cupboards, which stretch from floor to below the ceiling, like blue sentinels. An old, tile-clad dairy table doubles as an island; linen curtains hide paraphernalia under the sink; the shelves made of reclaimed cheese boards add to the rural air.
Interior designer and ceramicist Gavin Houghton brought equally rus in urbe yearnings to his south London home. “It’s a Marmite thing but I’ve never been keen on high-up cabinets; I like being able to grab things off shelves while I’m cooking, not rummage around in cupboards,” he says. A foliage-clad wallpaper peeks through the back of an old dresser filled with Houghton’s colourful pottery; an emerald-green cupboard he bought from eBay is for food storage; the wonky floors are reclaimed. Apart from the sink — found on the street — nothing is fitted. But like Elizabeth David’s culinary ideal, everything works.
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