The hardware shop has been given a soft-edged makeover by London-based interior designer Matilda Goad
There’s something really appealing about a hardware shop, a place that sells stuff that can remedy issues in your home, that is populated by knowledgeable staff and a whole different language jargon.
It feels like an escape from the everyday.
Stylist turned interior designer Matilda Goad has turned that specialist concept on its head to deliver a space that looks more like a swanky haberdashery than a place to rock up to sporting a pair of Snickers pants.
It is filled with things you didn’t really think you’d lust after, and yet the order, the presentation, the frills and the frippery, combine to make what has been considered a macho area feel very female-friendly.
And the findings of a 2018 study carried out by the Hardware Association of Ireland (HAI) reflect this shift.
It found that 49 per cent of women said they really enjoyed DIY.
She launched her eponymous interior design business in 2017, and it took off when a scalloped raffia lampshade went viral.
She operates her design practice, Matilda Goad & Co as well as the hardware and lighting shop, MG&CO, from 194 Ebury Street in the heart of London’s Pimlico Road design district.
Her talent and her network helped her collaborate with many top brands, including Liberty London and Anthropologie.
Her eye for aesthetics was trained from an early age.
Her fashion designer mother started out working as an assistant to the king of 1960s Swinging London, Ossie Clark.
Her bestie is fashion label Shrimps founder Hannah Weiland.
Like many of the decorate, Goad started out in fashion, studying art at Camberwell College of Arts before working as a stylist at Russian Vogue, Wonderland and later assisting fashion director Venetia Scott at British Vogue.
Her rationale for setting up the shop was simple: supplying things that she couldn’t find elsewhere and that she decided to design.
Everything on sale is firmly rooted in functionality.
There are cleats and S-hooks, café curtain pole brackets, that lend privacy but allow light to also come through, and The Essentials, a series of lighting fixtures and cupboards, and press door pulls in glamorous 1970s-inspired Lucite, in bamboo form and with decorative metal plates in finishes you hadn’t even realised you desired.
And yet you do.
The collection has arisen from Goad’s belief that hardware deserves just as much thought as any other element in the home.
"They are the most touched pieces in your home yet often overlooked in the design process," she says.
“Honest, textural and purpose-led, our Essentials have been designed not just to perform but to bring joy too.”
The pieces are designed to appeal as much to designers specifying whole projects as to discerning individuals with an eye for detail, looking to upgrade even the smallest corners of their home.
A key selling point is that everything on show is held in stock.
There are no lead times.
For me, it’s about designing with intent,” says Matilda.
“It’s taking the things that people genuinely need – the things that make a home work well – and making them beautiful and readily available.”
Prices start from about €20 at matildagoad.com
