Shelley Klein - The See-Through House: My Father in Full Colour

Shelley Klein was born in Scotland in 1963, the youngest daughter of textile designer Bernat and knitwear designer Margaret Klein. She left the See-Through House in 2017 and now lives in London where she works as a writer.

To my mother and father, who travel with me, always

All photos, unless otherwise stated, are used by kind permission of the Klein family.

High Sunderland through the birch trees, c. 1990

Mace, Bernat Klein tweed sample, c. 1961; Image National Museums Scotland

Bernat Klein Scotland catalogue, featuring High Sunderland, c. 1964

Bernat Klein space-dyed mohair yarn sample, 196080; Image National Museums Scotland

Princess Margaret in a Bernat Klein velvet tweed as she leaves the WAIF Ball in Hollywood, 1965 Reginald Davis / Shutterstock

Infinite Blue (oil on canvas), Bernat Klein, 2011; Image Liz Seabrook

Sketch of the Living Room at High Sunderland Peter Womersley, c. 1956; Image Liz Seabrook

Co-ordinated colour guide, Bernat Klein Design Consultants Ltd, 1971; Image National Museums Scotland

Beri considering colour guides in the Studio, mid 1970s

Tulips in the Living Room (oil on canvas), Bernat Klein, 1976; Image Liz Seabrook

Terlenka advert featuring a Bernat Klein fabric design, c. 1969; Image Jeff Morgan 09 / Alamy Stock Photo

Bernat Klein tweed with specially-dyed brushed mohair yarn, c. 19624; Image National Museums Scotland

Tulips 3, Bernat Klein, c. 1961; Image National Museums Scotland

Beri painting Lichens 2 in the Library, 1963

Elle Collections cover featuring Bernat Klein tweeds, c. 1961

Beri in a coat of his own tweed, c. 1962

Reflections: the views through the See-Through House Shelley Klein, 2015

High Sunderland, c. 1959

Fashion show at High Sunderland, 1963

Klein family group, c. 1927: Front row, left to right: Lipot Klein (Beris father) with Moshe (Beris brother) on his knee; Ochi Hauer (Beris cousin) with hoop and Ochis father, Beris Uncle Jozsi; Bernat Weiner (Beris cousin) sitting on Beris Aunt Julishkas knee; Ochis sister, Eva (Beris cousin). Back row, left to right: Zori Klein (Beris mother); Beris Aunt Helene (Jozsis wife); Beris Uncle Gabor (Aunt Julishkas husband) and Beris Aunt Piri. Beri was hiding at the back of the group and nothing would persuade him to come out and be photographed.

Hallway, 2016 Taran Wilkhu, courtesy of The Modern House

Watercolour design for High Sunderland Peter Womersley, c. 1956

Beri and baby Shelley, 1963

Middle Bedroom, Ideal Home, c. 1966

Living Room, Ideal Home, c. 1966

Zori, Moshe, Beri and Lipot, c. 1930

Peter Womersley, c. 1961

The Studio, c. 1972

Beri with loom at Netherdale Mill, c. 1966 Denis Straughan/The Scotsman Publications Ltd.

Living Room: Bernat Klein Scotland catalogue, featuring High Sunderland, c. 1964

Peggy knitting with Shelley, c. 1967

Library, Workspace, Top Couch, c. 1966

Beris Bezalel art school student card, c. 1940

Peggy in Leeds, c. 1947

Zori, c. 1934

Dining Room, Ideal Home, c. 1966

Beri apprenticing in a factory, c. 1949

Beri at Netherdale Mill, Yorkshire Post, c. 1962 Johnston Press / SWNS

A spread for Christian Dior in Art et la Mode, 1964

Peggy roasting coffee beans in the Kitchen, c. 1967

Master Bedroom, Ideal Home, c. 1966

Beri returning to High Sunderland from The Studio, c. 1975

Garden with Shelleys bicycle, c. 1970

The Wendy house, c. 1970

Beri painting in the garden, c. 1968

High Sunderland in the snow, c. 1964

A final drink before leaving: fashion show at High Sunderland, 1963

Every effort has been made to trace or contact copyright holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention, at the earliest opportunity.

One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted

One need not be a House

Emily Dickinson, c. 1863

For the memoir is a repository of truths, as each discrete truth is uttered, but the memoir cant be the repository of Truth which is the very breadth of the sky, too vast to be perceived in a single gaze.

A Widows Story, Joyce Carol Oates, 2011

Colour was all around me, pursuing me, cajoling me, asking to be admitted into my life and the lives of many others.

Eye for Colour, Bernat Klein, 1965

Requirements: On an isolated site between Selkirk and Peebles, this house known as High Sunderland was required to be easily run and to provide maximum comfort for a household of five. Kitchen and dining room were to be separated and special provision was required for children and weekend guests.

Architecture & Building, 1958

I am sitting in a van alongside all my worldly possessions, driving north on the M6. Four hundred and fifty miles behind me is the tiny fishing village of Port Isaac in Cornwall where I have lived for the past twelve years. Sixty miles ahead of me is a house called High Sunderland in the Scottish Borders. This is where I was born and grew up.

I turn off the motorway on to the A7. Night has fallen, but even so I dont need to see the landscape to know what it looks like. I have driven this road hundreds of times, know its hills and valleys scoured with gorse, its forests and fields sutured together by dry-stone walls. This region has a brutal history, with clans from either side of the border invading each others homesteads, stealing livestock, slaughtering one another, acts that still echo through the countryside in names such as Bloody Burn and Slain Mens Lea.

But this place is also about farming, about uplands and lowlands and the sheep that graze on them. About wool and water and weaving. It is no accident that for centuries the Borders relied on the textile trade because the rivers that score this terrain once turned the wheels of this industry while the rain that filled those rivers not only produced some of the finest grazing in the whole of the country, it is woven into the landscape in the way trees stream across hills and rivers flow down the valleys.

Snow begins to fall and I start to wonder whether, when I get to High Sunderland, I will make it up our driveway or whether Ill get stuck and have to abandon the van and walk the rest of the way on foot. I know my father, Beri, will be worried. Hell be standing in the hallway, hovering around the front door, waiting to spot my headlights.