A Room of One's Own: Poirot, cheese and wine in the hushed home library of Cassandra Ellis

In this, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, it seems only fitting that Cassandra Ellis should usher me into a room painted in ‘Fallen Plum’. We’re in the centre of Bath, but it’s quiet enough on this pretty side street that you’d be able to hear the soft thump of fruit dropping from trees, were we in the orchard the name evokes. This richly coloured retreat off Cassandra’s hallway is, she says, her library, “and the one finished room in the house. It’s nice to have this done, finally, because this place has been quite a challenge.”

She and her husband, Ed Prichard, moved to this Georgian terrace two years ago from Battersea, having sought factory space so that Cassandra could grow Atelier Ellis, the paint company she founded in 2018. Cassandra now heads up her team of eight from a factory on the Avon and an elegant store on Walcot Street, both within walking distance from home. The company is currently the only bio-based paint maker in the UK, “which means no petroleum, no plastic, no fossil-fuels; I can’t quite believe we’re the only ones doing it.”

Theirs is a lean system made with “really high-quality materials”, she says. “I formulate the colours from pigments which are then mixed into a base formulated by us. The ingredients used in these bases have been tested by our chemist, our team and our master decorator. Our colours are then made to order at our factory as required – we’re not pulling finished tins from shelves. I’ve got such a good team, they want me to sit and think and write about how to move things forward.”

Which is where this room, with its glut of books lining the walls, comes in. The calm, pared-back aesthetic Cassandra has come to be known for – in her previous homes in London and Lewes, East Sussex, as well as in her paint company – lends itself perfectly to a place reserved for reading and contemplation. “I think a lot of people assume because I make colours, I’m going to have a very colourful house – that I’ll colour something in for the sake of it. And that’s the opposite of what I do. I think the point of colour is almost to not see colour. When we sold Lewes there were about 17 colours in there, but you wouldn’t know, because they just disappeared.”

Certainly the walls, ceiling and shelves of this library seem to recede into plummy darkness, leaving only the books themselves and the few objects and mementoes allowed to take up space here: a mineral-encrusted sculpture by Cassandra’s friend Ed Kluz, on a marble-topped Guéridon table; a porcelain bowl by ceramicist William Papworth; stones from the beach at Seven Sisters (“It was my 50^th birthday, I made Ed carry them back with us”); a Fang mask bought from the Bath branch of 8 Holland Street; a woven piece by textile artist Susie Gillespie; a treasured photograph of an 18-year-old Cassandra in her native New Zealand with her younger sister, Melody, who died at the age of 25.

The four-storey house the library occupies was built in 1767 by the architect John Wood the Younger, shortly before he started work on the Royal Crescent, and hadn’t had any significant maintenance done for 40 years when Cassandra and Ed moved here. “The roof was leaking, and all the windows had to be fully restored, among other things.” We sit and watch for a moment as the afternoon light from one of those sash windows throws patterns on the library door, the old Georgian glass making beautiful distortions. “That’s part of the point of all this decorating stuff, isn’t it? Letting light do its job.” The door is an earthy brown called ‘Zumai’, made up, Cassandra tells me, of three pigments – umber, red ochre and yellow ochre – “so it’s perfectly balanced. There are so many doors in the house; I want them to be there but to disappear – and a white door wouldn’t do that.”

A colourist Cassandra may be, but the idea of arranging her books chromatically is a horrifying one. “Even putting them in alphabetical order – I can’t get on with that. They’re loosely sorted, so that you stand and you scan; you’re met with nice surprises. I use books a lot, and any book – even Barbara Taylor Bradford – can give you something.”

Like the best home libraries, this one reads like a biography. There are volumes on fashion and fabric, reflecting Cassandra’s early background in textiles and dyeing. (She has written three books on the subject herself; her mother worked as a seamstress, and Cassandra in turn is “very good with my hands”.) Fine artists, too, are well-represented on these shelves: Cassandra has provided paint schemes for the Whitechapel Gallery and the Museum of the Home in London, and for Francis Gallery in Bath, among other venues. “Working with people to understand the power of colour behind paintings, and how it can enhance them – I’m particularly interested in that.” Artists including Cedric Morris, Winifred Nicholson and Giorgio Morandi have inspired some of Cassandra’s own paint colours, too; she pulls out a book on the Hungarian-Indian avant-garde painter Amrita Sher-Gil, for whom ‘Amrita’s Green’ is named. “She was amazing. The colour we’ve made is more inspired by her life and principles than any particular green.”

We leaf through books by other favourite figures from the worlds of design, photography or food – Alice Waters, Ilse Crawford, Tamsin Johnson, Lizzy Williamson, Christina Kim… On one shelf sits The Daily Stoic Journal – source material, perhaps, for the quotes that get written up on a board in the Atelier Ellis factory each day. “I think it helps you make good decisions, avoid bad decisions, and keeps you focused on why you’re doing something in the first place,” she says.

Higher up, tucked in between Ernst Gombrich’s The Story of Art and The Future of the Responsible Company (by Vincent Stanley and Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia – ‘my go-to book’) is a copy of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – which brings us to the other important function this room serves. “When things get overwhelming, I read or watch Poirot,” Cassandra says. “It’s a ritual on a Sunday afternoon, we sit with the dogs [George and Otis] and drink something sparkling from lovely David Mellor coupettes, which we’ve had forever, we eat cheese, it’s delightful. The thing about Poirot is, it’s safe jeopardy, isn’t it? He’s a good man, he’s smart, with those little grey cells. And I particularly adore Agatha Christie – I know there’s a lot about her that’s out-dated, but as a woman she was quite extraordinary in terms of how she defied convention. There are a lot of books in here on women who have just done their thing, whether it’s Lee Miller, Chanel, Diana Vreeland… I love a woman who just gives the finger.”

To celebrate Ed’s 60^th birthday recently, they went to Devon and visited Greenway, Christie’s former home. “We got the little boat across the bay to the pub – wonderful.” Then it was back to Bath for a lunch for 14 in the garden, made by Cassandra, a talented cook who put herself through university with a catering business. Her love of food is there in many of her paint names – ‘Summer Pudding’, ‘Sunday Suppers’, ‘Tea & Toast’, ‘Bitter Chocolate’ – and has rubbed off on her step-daughter, Frankie, who currently works at the lauded Bath bakery Landrace. “It’s not just about the food, though,” Cassandra says. “It’s the coming round the table, it’s the anchor of a lot of goodness.” Still, her description of the menu for that birthday lunch has made my mouth water. Whether it’s ‘Fallen Plum’ paint or damson ice-cream, Cassandra clearly knows how to delight the senses.

Further reading

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