Dancing on the ceiling: a reborn Victorian live-work space in Derbyshire

But less welcome discoveries lay in store. On the day they moved in in 2019, the wooden staircase collapsed. The specialist summoned to inspect the damage reported back that the entire structure, with its tight twists and turns, had been removed at least three times before to allow larger furniture to be hauled upstairs in the past. It had to be rebuilt from scratch.

The previous occupants had been too busy, or cash-strapped, to alter the interior. This suited Paula and Maxine well. They have trod “sensitively,” says Paula, conserving original features like the foot-worn stone flooring and the plasterwork that was damaged when the servants’ bells were ripped from walls. Upstairs, the striking pink and white marble fireplace was installed by craftspeople from London. “No expense was spared,” says Paula.

The decoration, however, is not traditional. “I call it a punked-up version of the past,” says Maxine, referring to the cornucopia of midcentury lighting, modern art, antique furniture and punchy paint colours. These are juxtaposed with their own “non-chocolate boxy,” digitally printed fabrics and wallpapers. “I subscribe to the postmodern philosophy,” says Maxine. “It’s all about mixing up the familiar to make it appear unfamiliar.”

The ground floor now houses the studio and showroom, which are open to passers-by. The upper two floors are both a home and laboratory of ideas where they try out their designs on contrasting surfaces.

Instead of lining the sitting room in a wallpaper, for instance, they did things differently. “We didn’t want the pattern to detract from our paintings and artworks,” says Paula, singling out the Tracey Emin lithograph No Surrender above the fireplace. They painted the walls a deep plum and applied wallpaper to the ceiling. Customised to fit the space, the soft, scumbled tones evoke a fresco in an ancient church. They have also found ways to apply their patterns to furniture, including the sideboard by artist Matt Jordan who used stencils to transfer Blackpop motifs on to the surface.

The structural tweaks they made were equally deft. Originally three bedrooms and one bathroom, the layout was reshuffled to produce a separate space for guests. Accessed by a small corridor, it feels as “if it has always been there,” says Maxine. The main bathroom looks similarly untouched. They restored the airforce-blue plastic fittings – a 1980s legacy – and coated the walls and ceiling the same hue. “When you lie in the bath you feel as if you’re immersed in the ocean.”

In the kitchen, they removed a slice of wall to link the eating and cooking areas. The work surfaces are printed with asymmetric jazz-age motifs overlaid with blue-and-white patterns typical of 17th-century Delft pottery: a foil to the deep, Yves Klein blue paint of the dining room. The set of Hans Brattrud chairs was found on eBay. “Paula started bidding for them at midnight and would not stop until she’d won,” recalls Maxine. The dresser was improvised from an antique French cabinet with shelves above salvaged from a skip.

A row of futuristic plates, produced by Poole pottery in Stoke-on-Trent to mark the millennium, also evokes memories. They were bought in an “old-fashioned” Derby department store. “When we were told the price we thought it was for the entire set. Not just one,” says Maxine. Eventually they succumbed – and bought the lot. “After that, the manager would greet us every time we visited. We became very popular.”

While Paula, a photographer, looks after the business side of Blackpop, Maxine works on the designs. She draws on skills acquired while studying photography at the University of Westminster in the late 1980s. “I was their first student to specialise in digital imagery.” After university, she worked in a design studio and as a university lecturer. In 2015, a small legacy changed things. “I’d been searching for ways to use my patterns on different, more creative surfaces.” Emboldened, she “took a midlife plunge” and set up Blackpop.

Their first collection was inspired by the “tones and textures” of the 15th-century Flemish tapestries hanging at nearby Chatsworth. This led to a collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery based on X-ray imagery of the museum’s Tudor portraits, which won an award at Decorex, the annual London interiors show. Next came a commission from Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. A pale green wallpaper in the neat loo draws on Soane’s collection, from a Canaletto wallpaper and Robert Adam tile design to Soane’s architectural drawings for the Bank of England. Another wallpaper, adorned with birds in flight, was inspired by an antique Chinese embroidery. All their designs are printed in the UK on to heavyweight wallpaper and fabrics that include cotton and a sustainable velvet made from plastic bottles.

Each design rewards closer inspection. A rug in the sitting room is embedded with medieval, stained-glass motifs. Portraits of Mary Tudor emerge from the velvety upholstery of a modernist chair. Elsewhere, you might spot the famous carved imp that peers down from the masonry of Lincoln Cathedral, or a flock of exotically plumaged birds from Milton’s Paradise Lost on a set of cushions. In this home, history is omnipresent.

Photographs by James Balston