When did we stop being so flexible with our living spaces? When did it become important to finish our houses to within an inch of their lives, and then leave and start all over again?
This is definitely the favourite part of my job. I mean really – I get to read beautiful, beautiful books – and say what I think of them. Of all the jobs in the world – besides the fact that I get to go to fashion events and look at incredible clothing… this is my favourite.
The scope of books on the market at the moment is just incredible, and as the book market in the world shrinks, as online books increase, this is one market that is NOT conducive to the computer or the iPad. There is something about holding a book and turning the pages.
Sometimes I like leaving a pile of books around the house to add to the decor – and I leave my favourite pages open. There is something about a great pile of books that screams HOME rather than HOUSE!
I have a pile of books next to my favourite striped chair that I just pick up and flick through. The pile changes from time to time, but right now these are the five books in the pile. I treat them very well (as a rule) but at the present moment they are looking a bit dog-eared from all the use. Surprisingly, colour is not their main focus. Usually for me it is – but for now I am looking in another direction.
I am incredibly happy in my own home right now. Really, really happy! For a few years there I was rather dissatisfied with it, always flicking through the Herald Homes eagerly every Saturday and trawling every real estate website for the perfect home that would make my life so much better for owning it. It got to the point where I had pretty much “left” our current home and everything about it bugged me and I felt our only option was to find a new one. My husband is a cautious man by nature, and I am extremely fussy – finding a new house was never going to be easy. So after four years of constant looking and two near misses (We really only found two homes in all that time that we liked) I had a small epiphany. The more I looked, the unhappier I became. So many of the places that we looked at where great ‘houses’ but many were lacking that quality of ‘home’. The house we had was a wonderful home, why exactly where we looking for that to change? It struck me that if I simply decided to stay – and make it work – that it might be OK.
So I went cold turkey. I stopped going to open homes (it had turned into a hobby), I changed my computer habits and I nearly stopped getting the Herald. That one actually I didn’t stop. Intrinsically I am just far too nosy and I just like looking! But I found once I decided that my home worked for us – and the things that didn’t, we would simply work around. Somewhere in my head I had decided that a second lounge, a garage, more storage, a study and a dressing room would make better. It wouldn’t and it won’t. So I moved the house around to fit a second living area in next to the dining table, I got the builders in to put some great attic storage for us and stole some hanging space from the spare bedroom. The shed in the garden became a beautiful office for my husband to hide in. And I realised I loved the idea that my children had grown up in this house, and maybe would leave home from here and if we were really lucky, they might bring their grandchildren back here to fill the back garden will small shouts of laugher again.
When did we stop being so flexible with our living spaces? When did it become important to finish our houses to within an inch of their lives, and then leave and start all over again? When did the concept of the ‘family home’ become unfashionable? The thing about many of the books I am going to talk about today is that they shouldn’t make us feel unhappy about what we don’t have, they should inspire us to change the things about our homes that make us unhappy, to truly make our spaces work for us. They should inspire us. That is their job. And all of these ones do the job so very well… helping us with that wonderful transition from a house to a home.
The Comforts of Home – Caroline Clifton-Mogg
Even the front cover of this book looks inviting. There is a big old sofa that has been recovered in pink velvet and it looks like you could just plonk yourself down with a good book and spend the rest of the afternoon there! If you were thinking this is just a book with pretty pictures in it though – you would be wrong. It is a wonderfully practical book with a more vintage, English, aesthetic to it. It is mostly filled with lovely soft interiors in soothing whites and caramels with country-inspired kitchens but it somehow manages to make them look very modern. She is very keen as an author to give you tools to convert your house into a home. And she is very practical with it. My favourite chapter funnily enough is the first chapter on ‘The joys of an orderly home’. It doesn’t matter how beautiful a home is if it doesn’t do its job of adding to the lives of those that live there. And for most people for things to ‘work’, there has to be order at the heart of it. I don’t mean in the ‘everything needs to be neat and perfectly tidy and cans in the cupboard need to be in a perfectly straight line’ sort of organised, but the ‘I know where this lives’ kind of tidy. A lot of books of this type are strong on pictures – and not so much on words – but Clifton-Mogg is a strong writer with a lot of practical knowledge to share. Enjoy! The Comforts of Home – Caroline Clifton-Mogg, published by Ryland Peters and Small, distributed by Southern Publishing Group and its RRP is $59.99 and is available now.
Recycled home – Mark and Sally Bailey. Photographs by Debi Treloar
I am going to start with my one criticism of this book (and it is a tiny one) – the cover of it is not a particularly accurate picture of the book itself. Don’t get me wrong – it is a beautiful cover – but the book is warmer and more interesting than you might at first glance surmise. ‘Rescue, repair, reuse, and re-think’ is the design philosophy of designers Mark and Sally Bailey. The book is filled with worn, used, painted, stripped pieces. Packing crates, battered antiques, vintage textiles all have new life breathed into them with the different viewpoint from this talented couple. I keep shoving post it notes all through this book as I see ideas that are achievable and practical that I can file away for another time when I get bored with the house – all ides that won’t break the bank. The aesthetic is very raw and stripped back – but they still balance it with quirky use of fabrics (wrapping an old lampshade stand with vintage fabric) and other ideas that stop it becoming too masculine. Love it. The Recycled Home – Mark and Sally Bailey. Published by Ryland Peters and Small, distributed by Southern Publishing Group. Its RRP is also $59.99 and is available now.
Home Love by Megan Morton
The one thing that often bugs me about books from overseas is that they are written with Europe in mind (or the US). The antipodean corner of the world is often neglected and left to try to interpret what is happening to the rest of the world to our way of living and our climate. Megan Morton is an Australian designer who has written a book that sets out to correct this. The subtitle of the book is 100 inspiring ideas for creating beautiful rooms, and I would bet there are far more than 100 useful ideas in this particular book. The book is very wide thematically with retro, soft industrial, casual, vintage, glamour, postmodern psychedelic and coastal as some of the subjects represented. There is even a short chapter on using movies as inspiration for interior design. One of my favourite films is Nanny McPhee (yes really) because I love all the set design, colours and fabric used. I have got ideas from the film. I really do love this book for her sheer joy de vie with interiors – just find what it is that make you happy – and make it work. She has lots of practical tips with things like wallpaper, curtains (how to measure them correctly) as well as the more usual colour advice. My mother bought me this book from my favourite bookseller Arcadia at 26 Osbourne St, Newmarket. They are extremely knowledgeable there and if there is a book you want they will order it in a jiffy. It has a lovely homely feel to it with tablecloths on the tables the books are stacked on. Nice attention to detail. No wonder I am particularly fond of it. Home Love by Megan Morton is published by Penguin and its RRP is $62.
Simple Home by Sally and Mark Bailey photography by Debi Treloar
This is the second book written by Sally and Mark Bailey and it is a simpler book in tone than the first. With this book they have gone for a more uncluttered feel with all things needing to be useful, durable and honest. It is much more pared back than their first, though the use of wood and a pale, light to the touch palette is evident everywhere. If it is a calmer look that is needed for your home then this is the book for you. I bought this book for a very dear friend of mine. I worked on her house for her and we had a very limited budget. Where possible we used retro Scandinavian pieces salvaged from Trademe, used lots of white and cream in the colourscape, kept the curtains simple in linens and added small splashes of velvet in intense colour to help anchor it all. This book was just about written for her and will help as she slowly adds more things to the house to make it all her own home. Simple Home by S & M Bailey. Published by Ryland Peters and Small. RRP is $59.99 and it is available now.
Home Work by John Walsh, photography by Patrick Reynolds
Previously I mentioned that a lot of design is not being twisted to suit our own antipodean needs. This is not so much an interiors book (though actually it is ALSO an interiors book) as it is a design book. The book is essentially about New Zealand architects and their OWN homes. Homes that they have designed for themselves away from a client’s brief. They are homes that have been designed simply to meet their own, and their families’, needs. I have loved poring over this book. My husband and I have been dreaming about building our own beach house one day. It is like a hobby for us – the home we own suits us too well, so what would happen if we got a beautiful piece of land, an architect and a builder together with our ideas – where would it lead us? It may never happen of course but there remains in my head a very New Zealand beach house with all the things that we would need in the long term (flexibility to have guests – and eventually our children and their grandchildren), ease of use (concrete floors) wood walls (I love plywood) with a very Scandinavian feel to it. We once holidayed with my extended family in Saltum, Jutland, in Northern Denmark in a bach that was built (along with many others) straight into the sand dunes – even with a sand and tussock roof to help it blend it. I loved the way the lines between land and building were blurred so much.
This book is full of wonderful homes (mostly by male architects. Where are the women?) – some that were built nearly 50 years ago such as Toomath House, Roseneath in 1964 by Bill Toomath, and the crazy Athfeild House in Khandallah, which was started in 1965 and is still a work in progress! They are buildings that have stood the test of time but I love the discussions in the book where you find out what went right, and wrong with the designs and build of these houses. There are 24 architects represented in 20 houses around New Zealand. The styles are vastly different from the ‘Skybox’ built over an old warehouse in Wellington by Gerald Melling which seems to have Japanese influences, though to the ‘Narrow Neck House’ by Julie Stout and David Mitchell, with its hand-drawn quality. There are town houses, beach houses, apartments, and rustic baches (Tony Watkins’ charming ramshackle house in Glendowie) and suburban homes all covered in this book. The photographs are gorgeous but the conversations with the architects are truly enlightening. We have come away from the book knowing if we are ever able to build, we have found our architect. The charming, and pragmatic Michael O’Sullivan with the O’Sullivan House in Mangere Bridge. It is not the first place that springs to mind with architecturally designed homes – but this built on a small site is compact and perfect. It is a practical family home that encourages a family to live and play together instead of everyone going off to their own separate space. It is playful and glorious. I loved this book. Random House publishes it, its RRP is $75 and it is available now.
By Anya Brighouse, 5 April 2011.
Leave a Reply