As Lulu Lytle and her furniture company Soane Britain are linked with Carrie Symonds' reported plans for renovating the prime minister's Downing Street flat, we investigate what the possible finished product could look like.
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As a child, I was captivated by a painting that hung in my aunt’s house in Oxfordshire. I had never met my grandfather and was therefore particularly fascinated by this portrait of him as a young man in Cape Town, painted by his brother. It is extraordinarily atmospheric. Of course, I didn’t appreciate then that the chair he sat in was rattan, but now I wonder if those hours spent gazing at Grandpa might have subliminally instilled in me a love of wicker furniture. A little far-fetched maybe, but I am not sure how else I can explain why, in my late teens, I developed such a devotion to rattan.I first became aware of furniture made of plant fiber while in Egypt, and saw not only the extraordinary pieces with which Tutankhamen was buried but also the ubiquitous café chairs and tables made from the date palm. Around the same time, I started buying old pieces of rattan furniture, cluttering up my long-suffering parents’ house and stables with old daybeds, chairs, tables,