Aesop Bath

Aesop’s first store in Bath, designed in collaboration with JamesPlumb, is an homage to the city’s materiality, history, and sensibility. An olive-painted Georgian façade beckons; a floor of Pamment tiles, reclaimed from a nearby chapel, holds the memory congregational footfall. The building has been stripped back: a covered-over fireplace, a hidden staircase, and a dilapidated column have been retained and repaired. Bath stone fragments, found in the basement of the five-storey terrace, have been tenderly archived in the space. Steel pegs support stone shelving, punctuating, ordering. The basins and counters are sculpted from the same stone, stacked on lime-rendered brick supports. Upstairs, a hidden layer of domesticity emanates from a glowing library. A space of purposeful stillness.