Objects of Significance | Ruth Guilding

Ruth Guilding’s working life has never fitted neatly into a single category. Instead, her career has been shaped by curiosity, and a tendency to follow interesting projects wherever they may lead. An art history student, she then became a curator at English Heritage before landing a role at the Council for the Care of Churches. “After that I worked for myself, doing all sorts of things like architectural history and garden history - I was always getting roped into different projects,” she recalls. “Then someone introduced me to the editor at the World of Interiors - Rupert Thomas - and he ended up giving me writing jobs. I went to some extraordinary places to find stories, which was a task I really loved.”

The stories she brought back didn’t always fit the editorial priorities of the moment however, and it was this mismatch that pushed her to create her own platform. The Bible of British Taste began simply as a place to log the material she couldn’t place elsewhere - photographs that didn’t quite suit a commission, houses that didn’t fit the magazine’s brief. Launched in the early era of blogs, long before Instagram reshaped visual publishing, it quickly found an audience with an appreciation for characterful, unique interiors.

Encouragement from her friend, the designer Ben Pentreath, eventually led her to gather the material into a print magazine. Now on its fourth issue, the publication is fully independent with Ruth snapping much of the content herself. More recently, in 2023 she turned the project into a book, distilling years of material into a single volume that champions that same lived-in aesthetic and unconventional British style.

It’s no surprise, then, that Ruth’s own home - a late Georgian property in NW5 that she shares with her husband - is filled with objects rich in memory and meaning, including a beautifully worn set of farmyard figurines. “They were played with by my three older sisters before me, and perhaps by relatives even further back,” she explains. As the youngest child, Ruth became the custodian of the toys, which were kept in an old cardboard box. “In our family, there was a kind of personal mythology that we should have been living on a farm. My great-grandparents were tenant farmers in Buckinghamshire, and my grandmother was born there. Her male relatives all went off to war and didn’t return, so the tenancy was given up as there was no one left to farm. As children, we were all fascinated by animals, and I was desperate to add to my collection. I even saved my pocket money to buy more figures from the toy shop on our village high street, so these really are relics of my childhood.”

A copy of Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf is another treasured item for Ruth. “It belonged to my father. It’s not a first edition, but it was published in 1941 and printed at the Hogarth Press, which means Virginia’s husband, Leonard Woolf, or one of his assistants would have handled it,” she explains. A permanent fixture on her parents’ bookshelf, the book eventually came into her possession. “My mother and father were quite young when they married, and before I was born, they were in their experimental phase, reading all the new literature. Everyone was buying these books - they were the hot ticket of the moment. Some of Woolf’s writing doesn’t appeal to me, but this one is particularly good. Plus, the cover was designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.”

On the mantlepiece sits a small flock of metal birds by the Irish artist Breon O’Casey. “I read a review of one of his exhibitions in London and thought I might be able to see him in Cornwall if I wrote to him politely,” Ruth recalls. “Up until then, my interest in art and art history had been focused entirely on the past. Meeting him, however, opened the door to the 20th-century St Ives School.” She eventually wrote an artist’s monograph for O’Casey, along with various other pieces. “Sometimes he would pay me with artworks - he gave me at least two of these birds - and I bought the others from him over time. He had a shelf full in his studio, and every visit I’d wonder how I could take one home. He had worked in Barbara Hepworth’s studio as her one of her young, penniless assistants, and through him, I met all sorts of other fascinating people. The birds remind me of him fondly. He was the kindest, gentlest man.”

The wildlife theme continues with a painting by Ruth’s daughter, Georgina. “I was absolutely thrilled when, as a late teenager, she began taking drawing and painting seriously. But this piece is just a little birthday present she made for me,” Ruth explains. “We had both just read a book called Fen by a young author, Daisy Johnson, which has all these strange stories about women and nature mythology, and that inspired this piece.” The gilded frame, with its ornate carving, carries its own story. “When I was about 22, I lived in a housing co-op in Primrose Hill. It was very different back then - shabby, certainly not a destination address. One day, an elderly lady was selling things on the pavement outside her house, and I think I paid two pounds for this frame.”

Finally, a Welsh blanket by Melin Tregwynt at TOAST is another treasure Ruth cherishes. “When I got married, my husband took me to visit his elderly mother, who lived by the sea in Llansteffan, and she had a Welsh blanket, which she eventually gave me,” she recalls. “Sometimes we’d go out on Saturdays to do her shopping at Carmarthen market, and you could buy blankets for a fiver, but they always had a scorch mark or a big hole because they’d been used in Welsh farmhouses. I bought a few myself, but they’d get worn out over the years, so having one without holes is wonderful,” she laughs. “It’s draped over the arm of a bobbin chair in my kitchen, and it will be well loved and very well used.”