Ingrained imagination

Inside? Well, even the worst detective could deduce that this is the home of somebody intensely creative.

It’s a feast of colour, original art and fabulous hand-crafted furniture along with a few crazy surprises.

The herds of plastic farm animals painted white and stuck to the spare room ceiling with a glue gun are something you’re unlikely to see anywhere else.

“We came upon that idea when Geraldine said: ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have something on the ceiling?’ We found the animals and thought it would be fun to have a farmyard, though it does freak some people out,” says Wilf, who bought the house with his wife Geraldine in 1996.

The couple lived in London before deciding to move to Geraldine’s native York to follow their dreams.

Wilf, a chef, wanted to pursue his artistic ambitions and enrolled on a part-time art foundation course at York College, while Geraldine, a textile designer with a soft furnishings business had always wanted to work with animals.

The house still had its original Art Deco windows and doors, which the couple retained, but it needed some updating inside, which gave them the excuse to stamp their mark on it.

The property now reflects their personalities and was a launchpad for new careers; Wilf became a furniture maker while Geraldine is a veterinary nurse.

Their home has benefited from this. They have five lovely cats and almost all the furniture has been made by Wilf from the built-in cupboards in the dining room, one of which hides the freezer, to the birch ply shelves for his vinyl collection and the bed which he made for his degree.

The nests of tables and lamps show his love of geometric shapes and his “rusty” range reveal the result of a successful experiment.

“I have the frames fabricated and then I leave them out in the garden for a while to rust. I dry them out, deactivate the rust and seal it in. I had them on show last year and people really like them,” he says.

His dining room table, which retails for £750, is rusty and topped with solid oak made on the diagonal, the quality of which you’d be hard-pressed to find in mass- produced furniture.

“There is just no comparison,” says Wilf, whose love of wood is most evident in his bedroom, where he has created a feature wall “gallery” dedicated to different types of wood including tulip and jacaranda, ebony and African oak. He brought the latter back in his suitcase from a far flung holiday.

The patchwork sofa in the sitting room also has rusty frame and a complex pattern of beautiful fabrics from sample books by Osborne and Little and Zoffany.

“I did some work for a client who was getting rid of lots of sample books and I asked Geraldine if she thought we could upholster a sofa with them. It was do-able but incredibly complicated and time consuming,” says Wilf, who also likes to rescue and revamp.

The hazel twigs were found by the roadside in Helmsley and are now tied together in a bucket and trimmed with fairy lights.

His CD collection is housed on old farm racking he found in a skip and topped with oak shelves.

The backdrop for his creations is lots of colour. The dining room is a soft blue and the sitting a vivid green.

“We are definitely not shy of colour. We couldn’t live in a magnolia environment. I think colour is important and it gives the house a certain spirit.

“The blue in the dining room really complements the wood tones,” he says.

Much of the art is by friends including illustrators/printmakers Mark Hearld and Emily Sutton and is the result of swaps.

Mark’s picture in the dining room is payment in kind after Wilf did the catering for his 30th birthday party.

The Chris Woods painting is a swap for furniture by Wilf, who is also a big fan of artists Jim Orme and Alan Davie.

Some of the pictures were made especially with the Williams’ in mind, which is why cats feature a lot.

Mostly rescue animals, they have complete freedom of the house and garden and the click clack of the cat flap is a constant background noise in the surprisingly tiny kitchen.

For a former chef who still adores cooking, the 8ft by 6ft space is compact to say the least but it shows that enormous kitchens aren’t essential. He has a cooker, fridge, and his favourite gadgets including a Kenwood that can mix, blend and mince and a spice blender for his favourite curries.

“People see kitchens as a social statement and they think the bigger the better but this amount of space is fine.

“It makes it easy to cook and wash up as I go,” he says.

Cooking is a passion but so is furniture making, which is now a full on job.

He has moved on from his studio in the garage to a workshop in Strensall, where he makes his own designs and bespoke pieces, including fitted furniture for homes in Kensington and Mayfair.

“I’m very lucky that I am doing something I enjoy,” he adds. “I might never be rich but it’s a great way to make a living.”

Wilf Williams, www.wilfwilliams.co.uk

You can see Wilf’s work in his home as he is taking part in the York Open Studios event. It runs over two weekends on March, 23, 24, 25 and March 31 and April 1. More than 60 artists and makers are taking part and are opening their studios to the public. They include painters, ceramicists, furniture makers and silversmiths. For more details visit www.yorkopenstudios.co.uk