Alongside sculptural vases and jugs, delicate glassware, colourful ceramics and terracotta cookware, you’ll find bottle brushes, garden twine, soap flakes and even a loo brush displayed in her beautifully curated shop in the Lanes in Norwich.

‘I wouldn't sell anything if I didn't think it was useful or beautiful,’ she says. ‘Everything is high quality and made to last.’ And it also has to be something she finds particularly appealing, she says. ‘I would never sell anything that didn't speak to me. I ask myself if I would have it in my house.’

She does in fact live in a very nice house. It’s a former rectory on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, with seven bedrooms, standing in seven acres. Pascale’s endeavours in renovating and decorating the property were featured in a House & Garden magazine profile a few years ago, and the article continues to appear on social media and on the website.

Pascale Smets outside Pascale Store in Norwich. Photo: Sam Harrons All the family were involved, including Reggie the dog. Her husband is Matt Pritchett, the Daily Telegraph cartoonist ‘Matt’, and they have four adult children. Their eldest daughter Edith Pritchett is the cartoonist for the Guardian and the Washington Post.

‘I didn’t ask for the coverage,’ says Pascale of the magazine article. ‘It was one of those serendipitous things.’ One of the magazine’s editors had visited Woodbridge in Suffolk where Pascale had just opened a homeware range within the New Street Market store, and the writer looked her up on Instagram.

Woodbridge was Pascale’s first foray into running a shop. On leaving school she studied fashion at Central Saint Martins and then worked for Daniel Hechter in Paris and Jean Muir in London, before launching her own studio and being nominated Designer of the Year New Generation at the British Fashion Awards in 1992. But with a growing family, Pascale decided to focus on home life, supplemented with some journalism and later a book she wrote with her sister called And God Created the........

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