Visiting from London

Summerill & Bishop

Founded in 1994 by best friends June Summerill and Bernadette Bishop, Summerill & Bishop began on a quiet corner of Notting Hill, after the two wrote a business plan together at a local café. They were cooks, hosts, and collectors by instinct, drawn first to antique French linens they sourced themselves—fabrics with weight, wear, and a life already in them.

From the beginning, the shop had a table at its center. People sat, talked, stayed, came back. When those early linens became harder to find, they began producing their own, working with mills in France and Portugal to recreate that same hand: linen with weight, a proper drape, and the ability to soften over time. The printed cloths that have come to define the brand followed featuring organic motifs including artichokes, tomatoes, lemons, figs, fraises de bois, often oversized and screen-printed. Nothing overworked; edges left soft, as if painted rather than printed.

This May, that rhythm leaves Notting Hill for a Charleston garden, where Wentworth sets the collection outdoors, across a series of tables under open sky.