Wealden Times | WT183 | May 2017 | Restoration & New Build supplement inside

Above: A short flight of steps down from the hallway and the living room leads to the kitchen at the back of the house
know ‘tut’. We all have ‘tut’ in our lives, don’t we? And
also, a lot of people have multi-function rooms, or openplan
living. This way you can have storage boxes that
you are happy to display, which hold all your ‘stuff’.”
She and Sophie met while they were working together
at the interiors shop, Tobias and the Angel. “The lady
who owned it, Angel, came across all these old printing
blocks which had belonged to a company called Yateley
Industries – it was closing down, so she bought the whole
lot of them.” The wooden, hand-carved blocks are artworks
in themselves – Trudi has a collection of similar ones in
baskets in her workroom – but are not much use unless
you know how to use them. So, Trudi learnt the ropes: “At
Tobias and the Angel I block-printed textiles for bespoke
orders, for interior designers. So, really, I learnt on the
job, with 10 years printing for Tobias and the Angel”.
The influence of Tobias and the Angel becomes clear
as we walk around the house, a semi-detached Victorian
house in Surrey, which Trudi shares with her husband,
Guy, and 21-year-old daughter, Daisy. One such item is
an impressive lamp in the kitchen, the glass base of which
has been filled with cricket balls: “Guy is a manic cricketer,
though he doesn’t play so much any more. Angel’s brother
Shaun made that – it’s one of our favourite things.”
The kitchen itself is a classic design, put in by the couple
when they bought the house 19 years ago, and yet the
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