In celebration of its 83rd birthday in 2004, Kerrisdale Lumber decided to do something special: become Vancouver’s exclusive stockists of Farrow & Ball paints. The idea, says Mark Perry, came from an interior designer customer who’d fallen in love with the line on a trip to England. “It’s very high-end paint made in factory, rather than mixed in store, which is something we have over at the parent store,” explains Mark, the third-generation operator of Kerrisdale Lumber. “You can’t really achieve super deep colours by mixing paint into a base can. If you really want to get deep it has to come from the factory.”
“The story of Farrow & Ball really turned my crank as well. At the time, Kerrisdale Lumber was reinventing itself and revisiting our age, so we thought let’s celebrate this and this very old paint line that uses clay-based binders. It fit well with where we were going at the parent store,” explains Mark. “It was a great opportunity for me to spread my wings a bit and go in a little bit of a different direction. It was a really good move given the way demographics of Kerrisdale have changed. This store wouldn’t have worked 20 or 30 years before, I’m sure.”
In 2012, expanding on the paint and wallpaper theme, Perry & Co. added Fermoie upholstery fabrics from England, which were created by the original owners of Farrow & Ball.
