If our homes reflect our personalities then what does Kentaro Poteliakhoff’s house say about him? It’s an eye-popping cabinet of delights, an irreverent mix of solid Victorian furniture, ornate rococo pieces and playful plastics. “It’s a house that has lots of stories to tell, but it’s also a reflection of me and my thought processes,” he explains.
Poteliakhoff’s magpie-like tendencies are also his livelihood. He runs his own interiors shop, Rooms, in Clapton, east London, selling vintage and antique pieces as well as home accessories that feature his own elegantly wonky line drawings. “You can always find the unexpected at Rooms, because we sell such a wide range of styles, eras and budgets,” he says. “We’re bridging the gap between fusty old antique shops and more purist midcentury design specialists. People love the colour-grouped displays and the friendly, homely, social atmosphere.”
It’s no wonder customers enjoy lingering at Rooms. Poteliakhoff is easy to talk to – charming, funny and as interested in others as he is interesting himself. He gets to know his regulars and often offers guidance on their interior design projects. He has been honing his eye for the eccentric and eclectic all his life; he was raised in north London but his architect father took the family off looking at crumbling country houses during the holidays.
Visits with his Japanese mother to his grandparents’ tea shop in Tokyo have left him with an enduring appetite for Japan’s pretty pastel ceramics and plastic packaging, both of which now pepper his home. “My grandparents’ apartment was behind their shop in an old-fashioned arcade, which I loved to explore. I was very influenced by the dagashya – traditional Japanese sweet shops selling beautiful, brightly packaged candy,” he recalls.
But his biggest influence has been his English grandmother and her Hampstead home, which awakened him to the possibilities of mixing things up: “It’s a 60s house full of midcentury Scandi design that she put alongside strong antique pieces,” he says. “When I started buying furniture in my teens, she was always keen to discuss my purchases.” It was as a teenager that Poteliakhoff also got his first taste of retail, helping out in an antique shop where he was “sort of fired for painting the furniture in too-bright shades” and a charity shop, where his habit of modelling clothes in the window raised a few eyebrows.
After doing an art foundation course, he studied fashion photography and styling at the London College of Fashion, developing a flair for curation and colour. He then assisted fashion photographers Sean and Seng, before becoming an assistant to the fashion editor Isabella Blow. “We created a striking clash, Isabella in her monochrome Dior couture and me in crazy, colourful combinations of high street and charity shop. She supported me to run with my eccentric ideas, spurring me on and encouraging my outrageous side. Issie always wanted to see the latest thing I had recycled into a necklace – a picture frame or a big clock,” he laughs.
Having absorbed something of Blow’s disillusionment with the fashion world, Poteliakhoff went on to work for interior designer Camilla Guinness. This reignited his passion for homes and led him to set up Rooms in 2014, choosing a site on Clarence Road, next to Hackney’s pretty Clapton Square. “It’s close to three very popular cafés, which is good for business,” he says.
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