A Georgian manse on the English border filled with a pair of artists' lifetime of work
‘For us, the whole house is a studio,’ agree Brita Granström and her husband Mick Manning, a pair of artists who have collaborated over the course of their life together, working as successful illustrators of children’s books, as well as pursuing their own separate painting careers. Visiting their Georgian house in Berwick-upon-Tweed, a town perched on the border between England and Scotland, is a bit like walking into their collective creative mind, where there is no line between art and life. Both Brita and Mick can be found working in every room of the house, and the walls are hung with their own work and that of their friends. Since Brita loves to depict the interiors of the house on her canvases, you might see the paintings on the walls themselves appear in one of her paintings, like a series of infinitely reflecting mirrors. The couple’s lurchers appear in their illustrations and artworks, and even the wallpapers are largely designed by friends in the St Jude’s community of artists.
Brita and Mick moved to the house 30 years ago from Glasgow when they were just starting their family, drawn to Berwick-upon-Tweed for its beautiful setting and small-town charm. Mick, who grew up in Yorkshire, had holidayed there as a child, and Brita immediately fell in love with the miles of wild, deserted coastline and the dramatic tides that utterly change the landscape every few hours. The house is just a couple of blocks from the sea, in the heart of Berwick’s old town, and dates back to at least 1705, when it was a humble weaver’s cottage, though it later had a more impressive Georgian façade added on. They were instantly smitten with the house when they saw it, with its warren of interconnecting rooms and a beautiful walled garden at the back. ‘When we glimpsed the sea view from the top floor, what is now the studio, that was it. That completely sold the whole house,’ remembers Brita.
It wasn’t an easy project to take on, especially with a two-year-old and a newborn baby in tow. ‘It' had been an old bed and breakfast,’ says Mick. ‘All the doors were asbestos, there were fire doors everywhere and wall-to-wall carpet. Some of the rooms had carpet going up the sides of the walls.’ For Brita, coming from Sweden where the British taste for wall-to-wall carpet had always been mystifying, this had to be rectified immediately. There were other questionable design decisions: the dining room had the same wallpaper on the ceiling as on the walls – Brita’s mother remarked that it was like ‘walking into a pillowcase’ – and the original fireplaces had been boarded up. ‘You had to have quite a bit of imagination to see what it could be,’ she says. Fortunately, most of it was easy to rectify, since the original features had not actually been damaged. A bit of sledgehammer work and eight skips’ worth of rubbish later, ‘it was like the house breathed a big sigh of relief,’ says Mick. ‘We felt like the house was really happy to have us there.’
The age of the house had been one of the things that appealed to Brita and Mick most when they saw it, and a chance encounter soon provided them with an unusual level of insight into its history. A local solicitor, clearing out their files, found the deeds to the house dating back all the way to 1705, which revealed that their house had, over the years, also been a manse for two different churches. The deeds also gave them the names and occupations of all the previous inhabitants, as well as, in some cases, an inventory of what was in the rooms. The diverse list of occupants in the 18th and 19th century included weavers, tanners, a sea captain and an aunt of Elizabeth Gaskell. Charmingly, Brita painted portraits of all of them, along with their successors, on the back of the sitting room door, from where they can now keep an eye on the present day comings and goings of the house.
Once they were established in the house, Brita and Mick proceeded, as they put it, to fill it up, partly with their work and the things they acquired, and partly with children (they have four boys, all now grown-up). Their first priority was to establish a studio on the top floor from what had been two attic bedrooms, each with their own avocado hand basin. All that went, and the pair commissioned local joiners to line the walls with whitewashed timber boards in the style of an airy Swedish cabin. Unimpressed, the Geordie joiners told them the space looked like ‘an upturned boat,’ but this only made it all the more delightful to Brita and Mick, as they loved the upturned fishing boats used as cabins on the nearby island of Lindisfarne. Next they tackled the kitchen, which is anchored by a wonderful Formica island which they retrieved from a local school that was shutting down, eventually finding leftover Formica countertops in the same discontinued shade of ice blue. An old lean-to next to the kitchen was eventually transformed into a light-filled conservatory with red and white checkerboard floors, a deeply appealing space that, like so many other parts of the house, makes for a perfect studio.
The house has indeed been designed to work as a studio, particularly for Brita’s ‘intimist’ style of painting, which looks to uncover the charm in everyday, domestic scenes. The sightlines between the interconnecting rooms have been enhanced by mirrors on many walls as well as internal windows, especially in the bedrooms. These allow glimpses of unexpected views, which recur again and again in her work. The light changes dramatically throughout the day in various rooms, and the play of light and shadow is something both Brita and Mick appreciate about the interior.
Throughout the house, the decoration is deeply personal. In the dining room, Mick’s love of natural history and birds in particular, which often feature in his paintings, comes through in a wall filled with taxidermy. While he would never buy a new piece of taxidermy, Mick likes the idea of ‘rescuing’ these old pieces and giving them new life. Many of the textiles are antiques, brought over from Sweden where the couple also have a house, and elaborate Art Nouveau chandeliers appear here and there throughout the rooms. Wallpapers by their friend, the artist Mark Hearld, and Mick’s old tutor Sheila Robinson, decorate the walls. Mick refers to their style as ‘shabby genteel,’ a phrase coined by Dickens, but above all it is comfortable, lived-in, and entirely their own.
Both Mick Manning and Brita Granström's work is available through Godfrey & Watt in North Yorkshire, where they are exhibiting 22-30 November 2025 as part of the gallery's 40th anniversary celebrations. Brita will also have a solo exhibition, Sea Interludes, 4-25 April 2026, at Thompson's Gallery in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.
@britagranstrom | britagranstrom.com | @mickmanningrca | notjusthockney.info
Elliot Sheppard1/8Mick and Brita's bedroom has an original tiled fireplace and wallpaper in Edward Bawden's ‘Seaweed’ design, available through St Jude's. A post-war set of Japanese-made haberdashery drawers stands on the right.
Elliot Sheppard2/8The shutters and panelling are original to the house. A painted cardboard oystercatcher mobile by Brita hangs on the four poster bed.
Elliot Sheppard3/8Mick’s life-size pochoir painting of a porpoise mother and calf hangs on the wall of the bedroom, seen from the ensuite bathroom. The wallpaper in the bathroom is Fish and Wave by Edward Bawden, available through Brick House Design.
Elliot Sheppard4/8A spare bedroom is decorated with Jane Churchill's ‘Coralli’ wallpaper, with pieces by Brita over the bed. The painted rabbit and lurcher lampshade is by Mick.
Elliot Sheppard5/8As in the main bedroom, the spare bedroom has an internal window into the ensuite. Both windows were salvaged from skips and then installed by Brita’s father during a Christmas holiday visit. Mick's lurcher jug on the mantelpiece is made by Sussex Lustreware.
Elliot Sheppard6/8The wallpaper in this ensuite is Mermaid and Whale by Edward Bawden, available through Brick House Design. One of Brita’s small glazed sculptures is set on a driftwood plinth.
Elliot Sheppard7/8The L-shaped bathroom, once used as the house's lumber room according to the deeds, has a painting of a swimmer by Brita on walls papered in Mark Hearld's ‘Compton Verney’ design for St Jude's. A nude study by the artist Michael Kirkman hangs to the right, and the ceramic sculpture on the vanity is by Brita. The armchair is upholstered in fabric designed by Brita’s friend
Lisa Sollenberg.
Elliot Sheppard8/8The swans in the wallpaper design are echoed by the whooper swan artwork by Mick for his book Near The Bear North, published by Design for Today.
