‘It’s all old junk from the market, picked up around and about.’ Tim Clinch, a professional photographer who has lived in Bulgaria, on and off, for nearly 20 years now, has certainly done more than collect ‘old junk’. Located in Mindya, a pretty village that sprawls out among the foothills of the Balkans, his house is roughly three hours from Sofia. It’s a beautiful spot, the landscape thick with trees and flowers, but the village itself has been somewhat neglected in the past few decades. One sees the occasional building abandoned and reclaimed by nature, with branches poking out through windows and roofs. But this is by no means the full story: for every house that lies empty, there are many more that show a great deal of care and attention – not least, Tim’s.
‘Property prices here were extremely reasonable,’ he tells me. ‘I got divorced in Gascony and lost everything, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A good friend suggested looking in Bulgaria. It was the first house I saw, although I looked at 30 or more. The view was perfect and the house was very affordable. Although I was fairly unconvinced at first, I soon fell in love with both the house and the country.’
Tim has tried to retain as much of the original building as possible, with the exterior almost exactly as he found it. The interior is mainly red, white and green – after the national flag – and he’s refrained from modernising things too much for fear of losing the house’s ambience.
It’s a gesture appreciated by the previous owners, who still feel a strong attachment to the place. ‘They come round every year to put up a necrologue,’ Tim says. ‘It’s a strange and rather charming tradition. On the anniversary of a death, they hang a picture and a small biography on the house. It sounds macabre, but it isn’t really.’
By and large, though, the vistas from his home are full of life: the best encompasses the village, the church and the tree-covered Balkans rising behind them. Despite various setbacks – precipitated by the downfall of communism and a rush towards urbanisation – rural Bulgaria is recovering its confidence, Tim feels, and Mindya in particular. While it’s doubtless a quieter pace of life, there are still things to see and do (including an annual rock concert). For his part, Tim likes to walk his rescue dogs, Bob and Bunny, around the neighbourhood and hit the wonderfully diverse local markets. There’s a weekly one in Gorna Oryahovitsa that’s a favourite: it was there that he was surprised by the sculpture that now sits on his balcony.
Having left most of his possessions behind, it makes sense that Tim’s spent a lot of time in flea markets recently – but they’re places he’s been drawn to all his life. ‘I have a great friend in Kyiv, and we were always hunting for things, scouring the markets, looking for anything that caught our eye,’ he tells me. Many of the place’s fabrics and finer details – a wicker cow’s head, for instance, which sits in Tim’s office – were bought in the Ukrainian capital, in happier times, over many visits in the past 20 years. ‘We would find things in our respective countries and swap them, like a cultural exchange.’ He gestures to the red-and-white fabric on a chest in the bedroom as a stand-out example: ‘It’s typically Ukrainian: I call it a “pop-on” because you can pop it on anything and it works. It goes with the green wine jar on top, which we found locally.’
The result is a motley mixture of objects collected over the years, enhanced by archetypal pieces nabbed from nearby. A striking instance of the latter sits in the end bedroom: a jamal, or stove, which resembles a wardrobe and reaches up to the ceiling. When he moved in, Tim also inherited an old Bulgarian blouse and apron, which now hang on the back of a bedroom door: their contrasting shades of green – light jade next to a lime cabinet – remain just as he found them. Here and there among the locally sourced items gleam objects riffing off them, too, designed by Tim himself (with a little locally sourced help).
His home is made up of three separate buildings: as you enter, on the right is the kitchen and bathroom; on the left is Tim’s bedroom and office, conjoined to the kitchen across a narrow central passage, which leads to a small simple garden, festooned with walnuts in the autumn. A stone terrace runs along the kitchen wall: this is the place to drink in those views of the church and mountains. In the corner is a log shed and, beside it, an old barn, now converted into a guest room and library.
‘With the barn especially, I wanted something really cosy, with traditional Eastern European beds,’ Tim says. These were built by a local carpenter, and the cosiness achieved through insulation for warm winters and cool summers. (The wood burner is an invaluable ally; unsur- prisingly, it was fetched from nearby – and ‘no more than 30 euros!’) Positioned side by side, flush against a far wall, each bed is ensconced in its own deep recess, allowing for relative privacy. They’re piled up high with blankets – many homemade, all brightly coloured with intricate designs. ‘Winters are very cold here.’
Along with these softer pieces, Tim’s collected a fair few paintings and somewhat larger objects of interest. ‘The paintings in the single bedroom are mainly of the nearby town, Veliko Tarnovo,’ he says. ‘The old dairy cart, used to deliver milk and cheese in the village, came to me from a neighbour. The plates above the cooker I’ve collected from all over the region: each village has its own distinct style.’ The old white table in the kitchen was reclaimed from a derelict house, along with the side-board, which was a hybrid of two different pieces of furniture. This sums up Tim’s tal- ent: bringing together a range of ideas and making them work – whether it’s eccentric with traditional, or contemporary with quintessential. Instead of creating friction, they harmonise. ‘The previous owners love what I’ve done here,’ says Tim Clinch warmly. ‘It always brings a tear to their eyes’.
A version of this article appears in the August 2023 issue of The World of Interiors. Learn about our subscription offers
