My brother-in-law John Sutcliffe, who has died aged 78 of cancer, managed to construct a career and a life around his passion for colour and for the domestic design of earlier centuries. Unusually for an interior designer, in his later freelance commissions he did the work himself, mixing the paints to his own palette of pigments and applying them in a wide variety of finishes. He also made important contributions to the Farrow & Ball range of colours.
John was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, to Holman, a shipbroker, barrister and founder member of the conservation organisation the Georgian Group, and Sheila (nee Frowd), a writer. He went to Winchester college and then to St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read first architecture and then fine art, graduating in 1965. His first main job, from 1968 to 1973, was as the East Anglian historic buildings representative for the National Trust, based at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.
His subsequent freelance work as a designer and decorative painter included a stencilled ceiling frieze at Attingham Park; a trompe l’œil plasterwork and faux Siena marble wallpaper in a Regency house in Marylebone, London; and hand-painted wallpaper featuring lifesize trees for the staircase of a colonial house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He also expounded his ideas in books. Two seductively illustrated handbooks published by Frances Lincoln were Decorating Magic (1992) and Paint (1996), the latter including impassioned advocacy for water-based colours on environmental as well as aesthetic grounds.
More recently, he produced two limited editions with the Old School Press, which benefited from the inclusion of his own painted colour swatches. The Colours of Rome (2013) and The Lost Colours of the Cyclades (2016) both traced changes in fashion in colour; for example, eager to see what was underneath them, John delicately scraped away coats of the ubiquitous white of Greek rural houses and revealed a wide range of beautiful ochres, blues and umbers beneath.
He was an extremely good cook, specialising in lesser-known Mediterranean cuisine. His many friends also remember his beautiful drawings and his love of verbal and visual puns.
John’s first marriage was to Henrietta Day, with whom he had two children, Sebastian and Lucy. They divorced in 1978. His second marriage in 1980 was to my sister, Gabrielle (nee Carter), a violinist. They had two children, Tom and Laurence. After moving to Cambridge, he and Gabrielle transformed a series of terraced houses into extraordinary polychromatic creations, which were featured in Homes and Gardens, World of Interiors and Homes & Antiques.
John is survived by Gabrielle and his children.
