Design Changemakers 2021: How Benedict Foley Combines His Eye for Art With Touches of Playfulness and Joy

Who: Benedict Foley, gallerist and antique dealer
Nominated by: Luke Edward Hall, artist and designer
Where to follow him: Instagram at @a.prin.art and @foleyandprin

Why Foley is part of the Class of 2021: “Benedict Foley, dealer in art and antiques, has a brilliant eye. (See the Essex cottage he shares with his partner, Daniel [Slowik], which is stuffed with interesting objects.) During lockdown back in the spring, Benedict sold affordable original drawings and paintings from his collection, posting them to customers with thoughtful notes and beautiful packaging. He has recently set up his own public-facing antiques business (he has dealt with decorators for years), Foley and Prin, which specializes in unique, charming objects for the home.” —Luke Edward Hall, artist and designer

For gallerist and antique dealer Benedict Foley, home is where the art is. Now based in England, Foley spent his childhood splitting time between Europe and Asia, where a cultural education was always of peak importance. “It’s a great privilege to grow up in a culture that’s not your own,” Foley explains. “Some people have this feeling that you’ll never really fit in, but I would actually say it really opens your eyes to the possibility of things.” Foley’s mother often took on the role of historian for the family, educating her son through visits to various museums and storied places in Southeast Asia, where he quickly grew intrigued by the seemingly intangible links between art and cross-cultural pollination. “As a child, I couldn’t quite link the ‘why’ yet, but I knew I recognized, say, a pattern from a Chinese vase in Singapore on a piece of English fabric,” Foley says. “I was constantly asking questions about the history of work and trying to piece together those additional layers.”

Eventually, Foley teamed that curious spirit with further education, trading time spent traveling with his parents and wandering through museums for a degree in archeology and ancient history. But it wasn’t until years into his career as an antique trader and curator that he got the itch to create something himself. “Around the time I started selling antiques, a lot of people began buying art from me,” Foley explains. “I found the choices when it came to framing those pieces were quite binary — it was either super thin, knife-edge modern styles, or fancy, old-school, ornate frames, and that felt like too simplistic a choice for me. What tends to happen is people go, ‘Artwork. Framing.’ And they separate the two things. But by the time you get it on your wall, it’s a single object. And for that object to communicate successfully, for it to be a successful addition to your room, the two components of the object have to work together rather than against each other.”

Rather than feel boxed in (literally) by what was already present in the market, Foley set out to create his own framing business, A.Prin Art, imbuing his appreciation for art at every level with a bit of trademark British cheekiness. “I like things to be a little bit playful, especially design,” Foley says. “Where you live is really important. And I feel that one of the things that’s come positively out of this year is that a lot of people have reexamined their priorities in relation to the spaces they inhabit, because it is an expression of yourself. It actually has a massive effect on your well-being. And so, because of that, I’ve always felt that design, although it needs to be good, it needs to be functional, it needs to be effective, it also needs to be joyful. And if you miss out that joyfulness, if you miss out that amusement, if you miss out that slightly-knowing smile, it’s not doing the job as well as it could do.”

Apartment Therapy: What were your design inspirations growing up? What is your inspiration now?

Benedict Foley: My design inspiration growing up was living in Singapore, and looking at the material culture that I found around me. Singapore was a place that was regenerating a lot, and it emphasized this idea that the past was important and that you needed to catch it before it disappeared. So, I was always looking at stuff. One of the places that my design interest really started was actually going backwards and forwards between Europe and Singapore and seeing patterns that I recognized from growing up in Southeast Asia appearing in Europe on ceramics, textiles, and that sort of thing.

My design inspiration now is John Fowler. He founded Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, and my partner works there. I’ve always been very fascinated by his work because he always took inspiration from the past. For instance, when he was making these amazing couture pattern treatments that he was very famous for, he looked to 18th- and 19th-century dress making, and drew inspiration literally from objects that were analogist, but you wouldn’t necessarily think that, making a pair of curtains, he would go and draw inspiration from a dress.

I look a lot at Victorian and Edwardian framing, too. Which sounds funny [because I don’t want] to do fancy framing. But actually, a lot of the time I spend looking at designs for gilt frames where I strip out the gold element of it. So, I’ll just look at the shape — that’s taking the mid-century principle and an Art Deco principle basically, where you look at traditional forms and you simplify them by removing all the extraneous detail, and allowing the form itself to speak for itself.

AT: What’s your favorite project you worked on in 2020, and why?

BF: I worked with Patrick Mele, who’s a young, up-and-coming designer. He’s based in New York and spends a lot of time in Connecticut, where he has a shop. He did this amazing project in London, and I helped him with the art, the curation and the framing of that, and that was then published in [Architectural Digest] in 2020.

Also, allowing my company to grow in a way that I think it’s actually been wanting to for ages. My interest has been there, but I just haven’t had the time to do it. When I do something I want to do it well, and I want to do it with consideration. This year gave me that chance.

AT: What three words would you use to describe your work or style?

BF: I think I’d say joyful, effective, sustainable.

AT: Is there a specific piece or design of yours that you think is particularly indicative of who you are or what you’re trying to do?

BF: It’s hard to say exactly. But the type of frame that I have been producing during lockdown, and that I am making more iterations of next year, is what I call the bridge model. It can go in a traditional interior, it can go in a modern interior, but either way it brings color punctuation. 

Additionally, sustainability has always been something that has been at the core of what I do, too, because I have always valued the past. I’ve always wanted to take things from the past and reposition them, so that they’re contextualized and appreciated in the present. I had to try and think about how I could make the framing process sustainable, so I have been going through the whole supply chain and asking my suppliers questions about where that stuff comes from. Literally everywhere I could, I have gone as sustainable as I possibly can — we are either using repurposed, recycled, or recyclable, or sustainably produced materials in 90 percent of what we do.

AT: How has 2020 changed your perspective on or approach to your work?

BF: This year has been so productive. I mean, I felt a kind of responsibility, considering how terrible this year has been for many, many people, to use my time well. I’m very lucky that I was able to be safe — I have this place in London, and I live in this lovely place in the countryside, and I was able to just get up and go to the countryside and be like, “Okay, I’m going to go and grow a vegetable garden.” I was really, really lucky. So I felt that one of my responsibilities was to use my time productively. And I feel that something has come of that.

The thing is, for me, a lot of what other people found strange about the pandemic — home working and that sort of thing — was always my reality. And because I work in interiors as an industry, considering my home was not a new thing for me either. I’ve always enjoyed cooking and gardening, and all those other things, so a lot of things that other people added to their repertoire already existed for me. So, in a weird way, rather than making me turn inwards, it made me turn outwards. I finally had the opportunity to look out from my life, rather than always being focused in my life. So I had the time — the opportunity — to think about how I could take what I enjoy and try and make it into something that other people could access.

AT: Any big plans for 2021 or beyond you can share with us?

BF: I’m hoping to have examples using my new frames ready to ship with artwork in January, with the whole website online in February or March. I’m also doing a line of collaborations with people. I’ve got my own designs launching, and then I’m lining up with various other designers in the industry, and hopefully that will be a rolling catalog of stuff to add to what we offer.

The other thing that I’m doing, which I’m very excited about, is a project which is called Pin It Up!, and that is making a proper, beautiful, grown-up frame with a cork board covered in a beautiful, customizable fabric. We’ve got several fabric houses coming on board for that, and one of the first collaborations we’re doing is with Alexandra Tolstoy. I’m also hoping to go on loads of holidays.

AT: What makes you feel at home in your own space?

BF: As you’ve probably picked up, I’ve moved around a lot in my life — it has been of great benefit to me, it’s given me many positives and a unique perspectives on things, but it is disruptive moving a lot, so you have to figure out quickly how you feel settled. The elements that I’ve always brought with me — to interiors like my school rooms, my university, and rental flats afterwards — through all of those things is at least one picture, a lamp, and a mirror. You can inhabit any room with those. I suppose they give me a sense of establishment. 

The picture is actually what most people would probably consider the least useful of those things; they’d probably think that a light and a mirror [are] probably above a picture in terms of usefulness. But I find, in a way, artwork is the most useful thing, because it gives you a chosen view. Where you live, the view, you don’t have that much control over what you’re looking out at. You need a lot of money to have a really nice view, so not everyone has a nice view. But what you do have some control over is your chosen window, which is your artwork.

Interview has been edited and condensed.