Colourswatch February

For those of you not too confident with colour – or for those of you who like small, happy injections of colour – this month’s Colourswatch is for you. I have tried to include small and inexpensive ways to stretch yourselves with colour. Be brave…

Keep the wall grey…

Living in a city – albeit a small city- can at times feel impersonal, distant. But every now and then you realise it is just a great big collection of individuals, all crammed into one place.

There are days when it all looks bland and dispassionate, and then other days when you realise there are people out there with the same quirky, colourful view of the world – and it just brings a smile to my face.

This is my most favourite piece of graffiti/wall art in Auckland. Whenever I drive past it – which is quite frequently – it makes me smile (and not just on the inside). It reminds me, not just the limitations of bland colour, but also of us not truly putting ourselves into our homes.

We often do what is safe, what other people are doing, and not what really makes us happy. I am a perfect example of this actually. It has taken me a long time to get a really good grip on what it is that makes me really happy in terms of the space I live. I may have done what I have done over the last many years, but along the way I lost a bit (a lot) of myself trying to do what I thought other people would like. I don’t think I did this intentionally; I just lost sight of what really makes me happy, strong, bold, happy, clean colour.

This of course is not the case for everyone – I get this – but my love for colour has never gone away. Even when it wasn’t fashionable and neutrals where the palette of the day and I was just doing colour – but a very toned down version of it – I just did it because I wasn’t brave enough to do what I loved. I would like to think that as I hurtle into my middle years that I care a whole lot less about ‘fashion’ in interiors and a whole lot more about my own sense of style and how MY family inhabits the space we live it. So for those of you not too confident with colour – or for those of you who like small, happy injections of colour – this month’s Colourswatch is for you. I have tried to include small and inexpensive ways to stretch yourselves with colour. Be brave.

I will start with flowers – just because I can! Hydrangeas have lost their ‘old lady’ status as a bright and inexpensive way to fill your house with colour. These blue ones are from my mother in law’s garden and as such were free! I am told they grow easily in shady spots – the only downside for me is they need to be cut back in the winter leaving a bald spot in the garden. Their foliage is also great to use with other flowers when they have stopped flowering. My personal favourites are the pinks and the really strong purples. The whites are lovely for texture in an all white house and the vintage tinged bronze ones are beautiful in a more neutral house. I was chatting to someone the other day using them for her wedding flowers! They are unusually a bit more expensive this year. I think this is something to do with the weather.

My Godparents are Danish. My parents met them when they were coming over from Denmark on the same ship when they were all emigrating to NZ in the 60’s (did I really write that – in print it looks so long ago!) They became firm friends and started their NZ venture living together in a flat in Greenlane. Eventually as both families had their first child they moved to separate homes and the Danes eventually returned to Denmark for health reasons.

But I often feel that this time living together had a lasting mark on my mother. They had no money when they first arrived here, but the Danes’ effortless ability to create a simple home with very little, and their wonderful understanding of functionality and the importance of good lighting was to have a lasting impact. They remain, to this day, the very best of friends – and still visit each other every two years either here in NZ, there in Denmark or they meet somewhere new in Europe.

When I was living in London, I would go and visit their daughter in Copenhagen or them in Sjeille and my husband and I considered moving there as I just loved it so much. Their sense of style is so timeless and not trend-driven at all. You are just as likely to see a brand new couch from IKEA sitting next to a classic Arne Jacobsen ‘egg’ chair that belonged to their parents/grandparents mixed in with something found in an old junk shop or flea market. The style they exude is not of course simply Danish, but Scandinavian.

Below: A summer house called the Experimental house built by Alvar Alto, an influencial Finnish designer, in 1957! It would be considered modern now – yet it was built 50 years ago.

The exceptionally beautiful book “Scandinavian Modern Home’ by Elizabeth Wilhide is a perfect example – a view of what makes it all work together so seamlessly. The book is strong on history for the first part – each individual area is given its own chapter – Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish. Then there is a short chapter on each of the most influential of the designers – Arne Jacobsen (Denmark), Alvar Alto (Finland) – both furniture designers and one of my favourites Maija Isola of Finland, the Marimekko textile designer who designed the iconic UNIKKO or Poppy (1964) fabric.

It is still my most favourite fabric of all time. There are many more besides – and if the many names aren’t familiar – the designs will be. They have been copied a thousand times over – but the originals are still the most beautiful. The book finishes with modern interpretations of the Scandinavian ethic. It is a style that translates into the NZ lifestyle seamlessly – with a high priority on functionality and very little ‘fussiness’. Their use of colour in this book is limited, with most of the interiors white with a lot of wood added – again I think this helps with the translation into a New Zealand landscape. Southern Publishing Group releases it for Quadrille in NZ, is available now, and retails for $45.00.

A girlfriend and I were discussing the other day the hypothetical question of what little luxuries we couldn’t live without if things got a bit tight. I decided as long as I could live in my home, I would be very happy with the status quo as long as I didn’t have to give up beautiful fragrant hand soap and scented candles (yes really). I know this is not what people would assume I would say (expensive clothes and BOOTS was the first thing that sprung to my husband’s mind) – but actually I could work around that. My girlfriend couldn’t do without fresh cut flowers – and she would rather ‘borrow’ some of her food money than do without them if things ever got that tight. I think I could work around that too.

So this month I am featuring my absolute favourite of liquid hand soaps, Compagnie de Provence especially because they have been relaunched in NZ and they are celebrating their 20th anniversary. The company produces hand soaps in liquid and bar form, hand creams, bubble bath etc. I have always loved the classic shape of the bottle with the very simple coloured graphic labelling. They have every colour to suit every taste and now they have a plastic bottle in a smaller size – I assume to go in a bathroom that children use as having a glass bottle on the sink has never been the wisest of ideas! The glass bottles are refillable – and the refills are twice the size of the original bottle and approximately the same price. My favourite scent has always been the Fig, but I love the La Girelle 20th anniversary version, which was in my Christmas stocking last year. It retails for $39 and there are two different colour ways of the anniversary bottle. I love the lime and pink version. I like the bottles so much I have been known to use an empty one for my washing up liquid and it sits beautifully on my kitchen bench.

When you are hoping to inject a little bit of colour it can be done with some lovely little objects and a child’s room is the perfect place to do that. You can do a completely neutral colour on the wall like RESENE 1/8th Thorndon Cream (which is a lovely soft white) and then add splashes of turquoise and red for the girl who isn’t too girly. Add red and white gingham to that and you are away! These fabric babushka dolls are too cute to pass up, and I particularly like the larger doorstop version that is available. They start in price from a very sweet $9. Contact UBU on 0800 828 466 for stockists.

On that note – that is also often why I often paint doors, chairs and other arbitrary objects. Keep the overall interior neutral – and let the colour bring the zing! I have said before that yellows seem to be a hard note to hit right – and particularly with our strong NZ sun. But in this case – this is just the perfect banana yellow – and luckily it is called RESENE Banana Split and it is part of the Kid Colour Range.

The wooden dinosaur was picked up on sale for $10 at Cotton On Kids – I think they still have a few left – and also they have a cut out wooden dolls house as well.

While we are still talking about adding colour (and aren’t I always talking about adding colour?) – this year because the weather has been so consistently beautiful, I decided to do something a bit different with the outside area. We have a great outside area directly by our dining room that houses our outdoor eating. The wisteria grows over the pergola now so thickly that it pretty much is an outdoor room. I do find all the green a little bit too much sometimes so I decided to add a bit of colour (as I do).

All of these lanterns are both beautiful to look at during the day and glorious when they are lit at night! When they are not hanging outside they live on top of a high cabinet I have in the living room and they help fill the space as we have a rather high stud in that particular room. The three wire and fabric lanterns are from Xia in Mercury Lane off K Rd in Auckland. The large white one was a gift and costs $120, with the orange one $95 and the small floral one only $25. The two bamboo ones (fuchsia and aqua) both come from Republic in Ponsonby and were $19 and $40 respectively. The ribbon that they are hanging from came from SPOTLIGHT and Madder and Rouge – $4 per metre.

It made for wonderful summer entertaining as it only took 5 mins to put them up each time before people arrived and it instantly looked like we had gone to a bit of trouble to make the guests feel welcome.

Speaking of summer entertaining… I am not much of a gadget buyer. I am intrinsically suspicious of people trying to sell me things that just end up in the back of my kitchen cupboards – something that sounds really practical at the time but never comes out of the box.

This is NOT one of those things. I was initially drawn to the other version of this – it comes in a beehive, but when I couldn’t get it I thought that I would settle for this shape – I have now decided I got the good deal. This shape is just so classic and I love it. Every time we have had guests this has been put on the table, filled with water or cordial, ice, and lemon slices. I have just put a stack of cups next to it and let the kids (and lots of adults interestingly) grab their own drinks. It has been invaluable over the weekends – as I have just left it on the bench in the afternoons – and refilled it with ice every now and then and everyone has had a nice chilled glass of water. I swear my kids have drunk more from it that they ever have from the tap! The Shangri La Dispenser is available from good homeware stores or call UBU on 0800 828 466 for stockists.

I have been far too busy catching up on our glorious summer so far this year to focus on Colourswatch. As you will notice I managed to not do one at all in January – and the Feb edition is more than a little late. I promise March will not be so tardy! See you in a few weeks and long may the lovely weather continue…

By Anya Brighouse 22 February 2011
Into image by Poppy Fill, styled by Anya Brighouse.