A pair of American filmmakers known for their dark and twisted fairy tales have put their fittingly spooky flat in London up for sale this month, just in time for Halloween.
Stephen and Timothy Quay, London-based stop-motion animators also known as the Brothers Quay, are asking £1.15 million (US$1.89 million) for the haunting one-bedroom apartment, located atop a former tin-box factory steps from Borough Market in London’s Southwark neighborhood.
At first glance, the apartment, set on the top two floors of the former factory, might be described as sunny if not for the intensely eerie decor strewn throughout, including yards of dried vines creeping across the walls, unvarnished floorboards and worn louvered doors, images of the home show.
The second-level loft space includes the bedroom and bathroom.
Williams Lynch
An overgrown roof terrace
Williams Lynch
“The property on the whole bears clear evidence of the owners’ artistic nature and genuinely demonstrates how internal decoration can evoke independently different emotions,” according to the listing agency, Williams Lynch.
Indeed, the duplex loft has the deliberate look of something abandoned and overgrown, including rough stone kitchen floors, weathered walls and exposed wooden beams.
Skylights and large casement windows allow a forest of houseplants to thrive, including a few inconveniently sprouting in the bathtub. And a dull patina gives everything from the mismatched dining chairs to the spiral metal staircase the look of something coated in dust.
That’s all to say nothing of the creepy decor—including porcelain dolls, antlers and animal skins—which looks plucked from one of many disturbing art films by the Quay brothers, now 72. They’ve worked on over 45 films, many imbued with their signature brand of weird and creepy, including the 1986 short “The Street of Crocodiles” and the BBC-commissioned short “In Absentia,” which explores psychosis. The brothers could not be reached for comment.
While undeniably niche in taste, the apartment still has several universal perks, including a roof terrace and vast open floor plan with large windows on two sides