Inside a grand country house once home to the great collector Victoria de Rothschild

There were later additions. New York architect and designer Peter Marino refurbished some of the bedrooms and, in 1997, Robert Kime restored the Porcelain Room and the Common Room. The transitions between the touch of these three esteemed designers appear seamless. Victoria’s own themes emerge throughout their respective work; she was the driving force and they clearly understood and imbibed her aesthetic.

‘My mother had the challenge of working round the existing collection,’ explains her daughter Jessica. ‘She and Mongiardino approached this with great care, finding common ground in their love of layering, of pattern on pattern, of delicate stripes, paisleys and friezes.’ They used them lavishly, but in a restrained manner, with barely discernible variations in shade and motif – so different to the fashion for chintz and glazed cottons popular at the time. ‘I remember long trestle tables set up in the dining room,’ she adds. ‘Strips of wallpaper, friezes and borders were being stencilled, painted or block printed, then applied to the walls. There was so much happening, it was like a film set. They were creating a world that has hardly dated and remains intact to this day.’

In the grand dining room, there are several imperceptibly different, superimposed layers of friezes and trimmed wallpapers, and trompe l’oeil blue and white Delft tiles. Another of Victoria’s ideas, long before it became mainstream, was to use humble natural materials: cane, bamboo, matting and raffia. Sometimes raffia was applied to the walls, then stencilled – as in the corridor upstairs – and chairs made of raffia and leather would be stamped with a pattern around the edges. Her attention to detail was phenomenal. Every corner, every tablescape had its own story: the objects, the art chosen, the juxtapositions took you by surprise, but all came together in a natural way.

After 25 years at Ascott, however, in 2000, the couple went their separate ways. Based in London after her marriage ended, Victoria continued to collect over the following decades. With the confidence to buy primarily from living artists, her purchases were always an emotional response to things that moved her.

The Far East was new territory for her. She travelled widely during those years, with her great friend Annie Summers. Victoria was always on the lookout for crafts with texture and movement, and of the best quality: vessels, sculptures and jewellery, often monochrome, in natural materials – ceramic, wood, woven fibre, lacquer, platted thread, even paper. The perfectionism and discipline of Japanese craft captivated her – in many ways, it reflected her personality. She bought, among other things, Naoko Serino’s works of jute fibre; Ritsue Mishima’s etched glass; pieces made of whitewashed ash by Irish craftsman Liam Flynn; and carved wooden objects by Marc Ricourt.

After Victoria died, her children reluctantly decided to sell a large part of her collection. Designer Tomasz Starzewski, who is a family friend and the long-term curator of her acquisitions – together with Maak auction house, specialists in ceramics and crafts – came up with the idea of presenting an installation of the craftworks purchased by Victoria in the rooms open to the public at Ascott House, the rooms she had so exquisitely decorated in the 1980s. A harmonious juxtaposition emerged, and the varied pieces have settled happily within her decoration. Over 100 works are on show; an intimate collection, including personal items and jewellery, things she wore and lived with. Running alongside the public exhibition, there are private tours and related talks leading up to the online sale on September 21.

‘In many ways, my mother was an artist – creative and highly original,’ says Jessica. ‘I think of her as a maximalist/minimalist. She had broad horizons and collected widely, always curating and paring down in her final choices.’