I can’t cook, but I love laying the table and I really take pride in that. “I love entertaining I think it should be encouraged as much as possible. “I think a china cupboard needs to be highly organised, and mine is very regimented, but I’m afraid I have overspilled,” she admits. Despite her attempts to have fewer things, tableware is something she finds “irresistible”. Her own line of furniture, fabrics and accessories demonstrates the joy that she finds in colour and pattern, and also her passion for entertaining. “One client walked through his house when I’d finished it and said, ‘It’s amazing nothing matches, but everything goes together,’ which was just what I wanted to hear.” “I think lots of people make the mistake of thinking this goes with this, and this doesn’t go, but it doesn’t all have to match,” she says. Her advice (which she is currently dispensing via an online course for Create Academy) is not to be too concerned about matching patterns and colours. That deft mix of colour and pattern is one of Campbell’s signature strengths as a designer – and, of course, something that those who lack her designer’s eye might struggle to pull off with confidence. Then I think you can just mix it all together.” I think you’ve got to have a point when you buy art: it either grips you with such passion that you have to have it, or it reminds you of something, or it’s done by somebody you know. “In my living room, practically every painting is either done by a friend or has been given to me by a friend, so it’s really like having a gallery of friends around you. The things that she does have, particularly artworks, all hold a special meaning for her. “I don’t have as many things now – although my children would probably laugh to hear that!” (She has three children: fellow interior designer Rita Konig, and son Max Konig and daughter Alice Deen, both of whom work with her.) Her own style, she says, hasn’t changed that much over the past five decades, although it has “crisped up” somewhat. But, thank God, people are starting to realise that you get much better value for old furniture, too.” That’s why old furniture is good it’s comforting. But I always try to use whatever is already there: it gives a patina to a house, which I think is very important. “Now, there’s a lot more shopping involved, more new things. “When I first worked for John Fowler, on the whole we were repairing or restoring furniture, or going into the attic to find pieces to reuse in a different way,” she says.
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