Restoring the Past: Inside Jack Laver Brister’s Somerset Home

For antiques dealer Jack Laver Brister, known to his disciples on Instagram as @TradChap, the drive to unearth pieces steeped in history has exerted a magnetic draw for as long as he can remember – and little wonder. It is, after all, is in his blood.

‘Both my grandparents were involved with antiques and auctioneering so it runs in the family,’ he explains. ‘It naturally progressed from being taken to antiques fairs and visiting auction houses to buying and selling my own things. I clearly recall the early visits to National Trust houses such as Stourhead and Waddeston Manor and being inspired by the worn interiors of English country houses. I was always called a magpie because I was so attracted to all the beautiful objects.’

Fast forward a couple of decades and Jack’s magpie instincts have only grown, now put to use professionally online, at flea markets and at antique fairs, where his well-attuned eye is adept at excavating stellar pieces glinting amidst acres of vintage wares, their exquisite craftsmanship destined to long-outlast contemporary mass-production. And so when, in 2019, it came to hunting for a home amidst the rolling hills of bucolic Somerset with his partner Richard, that same intuition for sniffing out potential came out in full force.

Needless to say, when the right house did present itself, it was not trussed up in a shiny ribbon awaiting unwrapping. Instead, it had been languishing, unloved, on the market for some time – awaiting, it seems, both fate and the sympathetic eye of a couple who would honour its lovely bones to intervene.‘Our house is in the centre of Bruton on a street lined with Georgian houses on the way out of town with a lovely view at the back over the Dovecote, which is owned by the National Trust, and the church and town,’ he explains. ‘The house is multi-phase, having been extended at the back during the latter part of the eighteenth-century. I immediately knew it was for us. Its generous proportions, its wide hallway and the unusually large windows front and back for a house of this size were just perfect. Our last house was tall and much darker, whereas this house is light and airy with a lovely south-facing courtyard garden,’ he eulogises.

There are two types of renovator in this world: those who seek to modernise and those who seek to restore. Jack, perhaps unsurprisingly given his job and his Instagram moniker, falls firmly into the latter camp. As such, the lion’s share of the work – which was undertaken over the course of the lockdowns, chiefly by themselves – focused on revival and reinstatement of the house’s original features before the inevitable filling of the beautifully proportioned rooms with exquisite antiques could commence. Where did he begin?‘We started by removing all the later additions and stripping it back to the original features. We revealed the original blue lias flagstone floors below modern quarry tiles and spent hours and hours restoring the original elm floorboards upstairs. We restored the floors and carefully repointed parts with lime mortar, but in some instances had to reinstate. We also reinstated fireplaces and timber period mouldings, such as architraves and skirting based on historic examples.’

The resultant style is, as Jack puts it, is ‘lived in, formal but comfortable and layered with antiques.’ In the tradition of interior titans Ben Pentreath and the late Robert Kime, the onus is on proportion, character and warmth (Jack’s heroes are John Fowler of Colefax and Fowler, Christopher Gibbs and William Morris for his fabrics); and whilst the Georgian splendour of his home is truly exquisite, there is no whiff of the show-home about any of it. These are rooms that are beloved, demonstrably delighted in and purposefully imperfect, the pieces found within proudly bearing the hallmarks of their history.One such is a large painting of Alfred Pitman that resides resplendently in the dining room. ‘It was one of the first works of art I ever bought,’ Jack reflects. ‘Pitman owned the bookbinders in Bath and his father invented shorthand, so he has a local link. I bought it at auction without checking the measurements and intended to hang it above the door at my parents’. When it arrived, it was almost as tall as the door! But it fits beautifully in our dining room filling the whole wall.’

Endearingly, many of Jack’s favourite items are not only prized for their own history, but also for how they feed into his family’s story. Take for example, a green glass paperweight which now sits atop the sitting room mantlepiece.Arushi Jute Rug, Medium, featured left.

‘I bought it locally with my grandfather when I was about ten. It’s small, not particularly valuable but is a lovely item with great memories attached,’ he says. Another is a bronze plaque of Jack’s great grandfather’s auction house and estate agency business, which is hung in the extension, near the dining table. ‘Although my great grandfather died in 1955, he has been a real inspiration,’ he says. ‘It’s a survivor, as they were designed to be thrown away once the company closed and so it’s of real sentimental value to me.’Vintage Satin Cutlery, 42 Piece Set, featured right.

He professes that his approach to, of course, extends to a scattering of modern pieces which slip beautifully into the whole. New dwellers amongst those more recent pieces absorbed into the house as if they were made for it include our very own Arushi Rug and our Vintage Satin Cutlery. As Jack notes, ‘Both work well with my existing décor. The rug is a good neutral backdrop to an otherwise quite busy traditional room, and the satin cutlery is great for everyday use and is not too precious. It has nice weight to it and is good quality – it’s gone down very well with everyone!’

And it is this, Jack’s eternally relaxed attitude and insistence on threading character, always, through his lovely rooms that makes his house so very irresistible.

Interview by Nancy Alsop