Threading through time

There are some interior designers who’d rather you didn’t know about Peta Smyth. For almost 50 years, Peta – a textile dealer – has been quietly supplying some of the industry’s key names, like Alidad, Nicky Haslam or Emma Burns, Managing Director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, with the pre-19th-century rarities – Flemish tapestries, gleaming passementerie or fragments of Spitalfields silk – that they use to bring colour and patina to rooms.

But now it is time to move on. Peta has closed the Pimlico shop that she opened in 1983. A ‘word of mouth’ sale at the end of January drew gimlet-eyed buyers from across the country to rummage through tassels and tie-backs, velvets and brocades, or the rolls of French silk stacked on shelves in the red damask-lined interior. The more valuable pieces in her collection – stately, wall-spanning tapestries, fine English needlework – amassed over time and assiduously researched by her long-standing colleague Joseph Sullivan, will be auctioned at Bonhams on 21 March in Montpelier Street.

It was Peta’s first ‘proper’ job, with respected early textile and sculpture specialist Joanna Booth in the 1970s, that sparked her interest in cloth. “She has a wonderful eye. We used to buy tapestries as well as pieces of needlepoint to make into cushions.” Like most fledgling dealers at that time, Peta had a kerbside stall at Portobello market. “At first, I sold things from friends and family – along with costumes from the National Theatre and my childhood stamp collection.” But the ‘rag lady’ quickly discovered she had a knack for unearthing rubies in the dust. “House sales were just starting then. I’d also go to Paris to nose through flea markets or attics. I love sifting through boxes of fragments, discovering unusual pieces,” says Peta, whose finds have also ended up at museums such as the Victoria & Albert.

Tapestries are a perennial: “Because wherever you hang them – even in very modern settings – they always bring a room to life,” she says. In Europe, tapestry-weaving techniques were developed during the late Medieval period – the famous Apocalypse Tapestry, at the Château d’Angers, was made for the Duke of Anjou in 1377 – with the patterns and colours becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. France’s most influential workshops – Aubusson or Gobelins, the latter founded in 1663 – are still operating today. Wall hangings from the Low Countries have always been highly prized: the main centres were in Brussels and Oudenaarde, but Flemish weavers often travelled across the border – and to England. After 1528, larger Brussels tapestries had to include a maker’s mark, confirming their provenance.

Other woven ephemera in the sale – pelmets, chair covers, glinting ecclesiastical hangings designed to hang over pilasters – lend themselves to creative reuse, too. Emma Burns recalls one example: “I found just enough of a piece of antique silver braid at Peta’s, which I used to trim a ravishing Fortuny skirt for a dressing table, taking something that was already sublime to beyond perfection.”

Interior designer Henriette von Stockhausen finds that antique textiles, “add to the atmosphere of a room in a way that brand-new pieces never do. They make a home feel settled – lived in. I’m finding that people are increasingly interested in using them.” For the sympathetic redecoration of a Georgian house in Devon, she put Smythian finds – a “beautifully faded” gold-embroidered velvet coat, a well-preserved 17th-century bedspread – to work as lampshades, curtains or cushions on four-poster beds.

“That’s the delight of textiles, if you know where to look and have a bit of imagination, you can always find a way to use them,” says Peta.

But not all of her discoveries will be ending up on the saleroom floor. Peta intends to keep some back to turn into cushions and other oddments – or just to look at. Selling textiles has not made her rich or famous. “But it has,” she says, “brought me a great deal of enjoyment.”

Serena Fokschaner writes for the Financial Times.