Visions

"People shouldn't be scared of colour," says Katushia Karahassan as she looks at the Café des Artistes colour scheme of bright blue, lime green, orange, aqua turquoise and reddish purple, with highlights of magnolia and aluminium.

The vivid rainbow of colours at the café in Voisins department store in St Helier, the capital of Jersey, is a dramatic change from the previous decor. The new look is the work of Katushia and her husband Ali, the new concession holders.

Until the end of last year, the store ran the first-floor outlet itself, and the decor was a mix of soft peach and green, with watercolour paintings of local scenes.

Voisins first opened in 1837. It claims to be the oldest department store in continuous ownership by the same family in the UK. Not surprisingly, it has a very traditional image, but in recent years it has updated its style.

Andy Pemberton, finance executive at Voisins, explains that the restaurant needed an image to match the rest of the store.

"The main store has become more fashionable, but we felt our restaurant wasn't in tune with that," he says. "We wanted to enhance our new image and encourage a cross-flow of customers between the store and the restaurant.

"At the same time we were very keen not to upset our traditional customers - and we've been pleased to discover that they are happy with the changes."

Pemberton adds that, one month after its opening, on 2 February 1998, Café des Artistes appears to be achieving the objectives. What's more, turnover is up by about 50%.

The Karahassans both have extensive hospitality pedigrees. Last April they opened their first restaurant in St Helier, also called Café des Artistes.

Ali, whose family is Cypriot, is a chef who has worked in major London hotels, including the Lowndes, Royal Garden and Ramada in Berners Street, where he was executive chef. Before the couple set up their own business last year, he was executive chef and a director of Jersey's Hotel de France.

Katushia was born on Jersey to Italian parents. She is a qualified accounts technician, but for several years ran the Marina Hotel on Jersey.

Although she has no interior design or art qualifications, she relished the opportunity to design the first Café des Artistes and says it was a lot easier the second time around at Voisins department store.

Rooney and Lee Decorators, a Jersey firm with expertise at special paint finishes, did much of the work in the café.

The walls were first painted pale blue, then over painted in a darker blue that was then wiped off with rags in figure-of-eight movements. The result is a surface with a lot of texture and abstract shapes.

The ceiling is bright orange, with the moulded coving picked out in lime green, aqua turquoise, aluminium and magnolia. Four suspended ceiling panels, which house concealed lights, are painted magnolia and edged with green. There are also six Altima transformer lights with white reflectors to highlight some areas of the restaurant.

Katushia decided to keep the large mirrors that were already in the restaurant. One on the end wall, reflecting daylight from the window opposite, is a 1920s original, with beautiful etched borders. Three more on the side of the restaurant were installed about five years ago and have pale rose strips around them.

To bring the newer mirrors into the overall decorative scheme, Katushia commissioned local carpenter Tim Evans to make new frames that echo the stepped profile of the existing skirting boards.

The wood plank-effect Amtico flooring was already in place and it was decided to retain it. "It's only about five years old and it would have cost £10,000-£12,000 to replace it," explains Katushia.

Because some of the old fittings were fixed to the floor, there were holes in the flooring when they were removed. The holes were filled with more Amtico floor covering by Marrett Floorcraft.

Furniture throughout the café is modern and stylish. There are ash tables on black pedestals, and matching chairs are also ash with black legs and chrome stretcher bars. Both were supplied by Warings Furniture.

Katushia said she fell for the chairs because of the cut-outs in their backs. "They look like smiley faces, so they are in keeping with the happy mood of the place," she explains.

In a corner by a tall ash counter are six high Italian-made stools. They have moulded ash seats with a cut-out and sculptural chrome legs.

The wood of the stools closely matches that of the tables and chairs, but Katushia got them from another source much closer to home - Voisins store.

On two sides of the café are two banquette seats with deep upholstery, made by Dave Moody & Sons of Jersey. The fabric is a rich mustard yellow with blue in an exotic pattern called Sandikli from the Kirkby House range by Romo Fabric.

"The pattern makes it practical as well as beautiful because it doesn't show marks," says Katushia. "And the reverse of the weave is very attractive too, so I've used the ‘wrong' side on some seats in our other restaurant."

Having two restaurants in the same town means that furniture and other items can be taken from one to the other when there are surges in trade. For this reason, the tables and chairs are the same in both, as is the tableware.

The tableware was all bought from Leon Jaeggi's showroom in London.

The china is the plain white pattern by Churchill Hotelware and includes huge soup plate-style pasta bowls as well as plates, cups and saucers. Complementing it are vegetable dishes and salad bowls by Apilco. An eye-catching suite of cutlery was chosen - the Jester range made by Elia.

Glasses, again supplied by Jaeggi's, are in a Michaelangelo shape. Unusually, the café uses the red wine size for white wine and the grand vin size for red wine.

Adding a decorative touch to the restaurant are bronze sculptures by local artist Stephen Houiellebecq, all of which are for sale. Also there are six tall, conical metal-effect vases filled with vast white sunflowers tucked into the corners of the room. Both came from John Lewis department store in London.

The bar area has been built with a facing of ash to match the furniture. It houses beverage refrigeration supplied by the Jersey Brewery plus a refrigerated Trimco cake display from Equipe.

The cake display is an important feature in the café because the patisserie, like the bread, is all supplied by Gaudins bakery, operated on the premises by Voisins. The café has always been known for cakes and continues to be so under the new management.

Menus for the café are bright blue to match the walls and were designed by KMN Marketing.

Signage, produced by Tubolight, includes a window sign made of sticky-back plastic to look like etched glass, which can be seen clearly from King Street below - the main street ofSt Helier. There are also menu boards, signs up the stairs and throughout the store.

"Signage added up to about £2,000, which we hadn't really thought about at first," says Katushia.

In total the refurbishment took three weeks and cost about £85,000. "It was a little over budget, but we're very happy with the results."