Desig House: Inside the November Issue

Our November issue is out, let our editor Hatta Byng talk you through the highlights...

We have been busy. Not only is this November issue a bumper size, with the return of 'Living with Art' - 28 pages on all things to do with art, edited by Emily Tobin - but House & Garden is also setting up shop at the wonderful Pentreath & Hall in Bloomsbury for two weeks from October 17. We are excited about the chance to be shopkeepers and our decoration director Gabby Deeming has spent months finding special, pretty, even whimsical things to sell - some of which she has designed herself or commissioned, and a few of which feature from page 182. If you are yet to make it to Ben Pentreath and Bridie Hall's Rugby Street shop, you have a treat in store and the House & Garden Pop-up Shop - manned by the editorial team - surely gives you an extra incentive to do so.

Our mantra has always been that the houses we show must be the best examples of their kind. This month, we are thrilled to include two award-winning houses. One was RIBA House of the Year 2015 and the other won The Georgian Group Architectural Award for Restoration of a Georgian Country House. The former is Flint House, an extraordinary wedge-shape building commissioned by Lord Rothschild, which stands likes a fissure in the landscape at Waddesdon (from page 168). The latter is the extensive yet sensitive restoration of Grade I-listed Shanks House in deepest Somerset (from page 148). Both are inspiring projects that required vision and, in the case of Shanks House, determination and resolve as the extensive project took four years to complete.

We also have the Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler designer Wendy Nicholls' inspired transformation of a mansion block flat (from page 176), with its Swedish-style wall paintings and bed hangings made from the yellow curtains that hung in the firm's former Brook Street home. We have all been mourning that move from Mayfair, but I look to a new era with excitement as the company takes up residence in Pimlico Road from November.

So I shall let you get reading. There is plenty to glean and inspire you in this issue, from a glimpse inside the restoration studios of the Royal Collection and The National Gallery (from page 134) to the skeletal beauty of Piet Oudolf's Dutch garden in autumn (from page 188). And don't forget your ceilings - as Elizabeth Metcalfe discovers between pages 81 and 86, there are so many more options than brilliant white.

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