Interview: interior designer Sue Timney  

My first home was in Libya.

My father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and we were always travelling. I was born in 1950 so my childhood was very post-war. Only after my father’s death were we told that he had been a member of the SAS.

He was a very gentle, loving and artistic man who had been brought up in India; his father was a colonel in the Indian Army. As an officer’s family we were never in the barracks but were given a nice house in a residential area.

As we had travelled so much, I had no real qualifications.

I left home at 16 to go to Carlisle College of Art. When I was 18 I married John Timney, a graphic designer.

My father lent me some money for the deposit on our first house — a lovely Victorian terrace in Jesmond, Newcastle. It cost around £8,500 and I found it exhilarating to have my own property. I did up the rooms and changed and personalised everything. My father was very strict and required me to repay the loan, with interest, which I did.

I have always had a collecting disease.

When I was at the Royal College of Art, Cosmopolitan took a photo of me surrounded by my collections, which were pretty sizeable even then. I love ceramics. They’re easy to collect and make great reference material. They’re always jumble sale and charity-shop finds — I think spending lots of money on collecting defeats the object.

I treasure a Fornasetti plate I bought for 10p. It depicts musical instruments and really appealed to me. It was only much later that Paul Smith told me my works are similar to his, and I realised that the plate I had was in fact a Fornasetti, and how much I had in common with his work, too.