New Zealand fashion and lifestyle blog

Divine inspiration

I still say this is pretty much the best part about my job. I get to look through beautiful books. All the time. In their own way, each of the books we are looking at this week makes use of colour and certainly not just in the obvious way…

I still say this is pretty much the best part about my job. I get to look through beautiful books. All the time.

And if I was honest I should be doing this anyway. In my day job as an interior designer, it really should be my job to be looking and being inspired by new ideas and thoughts all the time. Otherwise you can become stale in your thinking. My clients are all so different except for one thing – most of the time they are interested in colour.

I guess it is pretty obvious that colour is my particular strength. But the one thing I have learnt over the years is colour can come into the home in so many ways – it can be organic, painted, fabric-ed, hung, and even bought into the home from the outside with good architecture. In their own way, each of the books we are looking at this week makes use of colour and certainly not just in the obvious way.

Grandiflora Celebrations by Saskia Havekas, with photography by Andrew Lehmann, is colourful, and in that wonderful organic way that can only be achieved by plants and flowers.

Saskia is the owner of the celebrated Sydney florist Grandiflora. She is a master with flowers, taking them out of plain vases and whisking them off in a whole different direction. She hangs them, wires them, entwines them and wraps them. This book is, as the title suggests, is a celebration of all things floral. And for one who loves colour as much as I do, it is enough to make the heart happy.

Lehmann has photographed a whole raft of her events and occasions from simple dinner parties, to lavish weddings. Havekas talks to, and introduces the many specialty growers she deals with, but the stars of course are the many and varied blooms she uses through out the book. My favourites are the water lillies and orchids she uses with the vast collection of 30 coloured Dinosaur Design vases running down the length of a dinner table. She somehow has a gift of never allowing the flowers to be overwhelmed – no matter how large the arrangement might be. Grandiflora Celebrations is published and distributed by Penguin Books. It is $70 and available now.

Ok then – if happiness came in a book, it would come in a Jonathan Adler book. At least for me anyway! His newest book is Jonathan Adler on Happy Chic: Accessorising. And happy it most certainly is. I love his in-your-face-irreverence, with him throwing all caution to the wind in terms of colour. But if you read his book, you find that the irreverence is underpinned (as it so often needs to be) by design rigour. Even Adler himself understands the contradiction – that he is obsessed with taste and timeless-ness – but that pursuit can sometimes make a home lifeless without a healthy dollop of fun and joie de vivre. To be too chic can be just plain dull. We all wish for a bit of fun in our lives, and we so often take our clothes seriously (well, I do) so sometimes we need to take our home with a pinch less seriousness. Even if his style isn’t to your taste (his design can be a bit ‘all straight lines’ for me), he certainly opens your eyes to the possibility of colour and texture in our homes. Long may he reign! Jonathan Adler on Happy Chic: Accessorising is published by Sterling and is $32. It is available now.

Sometimes colour comes to us in a more subtle form. Much as I sometimes like strong bold walls of colour – sometimes (actually probably most of the time) – that is just too much for a room. Sometimes patina and texture have a huge part to play in the feeling and look of a room. “Creative Walls – How To Display Your Treasured Collections” by Geraldine James is the perfect book to help with that. Many of us are collectors by nature. With me it is books and coloured enamel kitchenware (and probably chairs as well – but that is another story entirely). The author, Geraldine James, finds a blank wall an exciting thing because is speaks of so many different possibilities. Her thought is that we have to be confident enough to say, “This is what I believe in. This is what I like, this is my soul exposed.” Brave words – but she is a woman who believes that wonderful things can be achieved without spending vast amounts of money or needing specialist help. Sometimes you just have to trust your instinct and just go for it. The book is divided into chapters on collectibles, memories, clever ideas, themes and inspirations and a chapter on children’s spaces. There is one great wall with concert tickets in one vast collection spanning a generation with the parent’s, and now their children’s, tickets providing a wonderful window into the family. She talks about how to hang your art, how to make your handbags INTO a work of art, and even the notion that art doesn’t need to be hung – it can just be lent again the wall. Creative Walls is published by Cico books, and distributed by Book Reps. It is $49 and available now.

With colour, sometimes the absence of it speaks volumes. At least, the use of white – a lot of white – can be used to amazing effect. Rachel Ashwell’s Shabby Chic Inspirations and Beautiful Spaces is full of white. I am a great proponent of white, so much so that I have been arguing with everyone in sundry because I was I want to paint the floors white. Not whitewash them, paint them, with house paint. And I will. Especially after reading this book! Lots of battered old houses – full of lovely treasures – all with a soft girly feel to them. I especially loved her own hotel in Round Top, Texas; a gorgeous old tiny homestead called The Outpost, with its timber-lined rooms and an abundance of white paint and vintage linen. A strong advocate for the ‘shabby chic’ look for the last 20 years, Ashwell has her devotees all over the world, and this book features homes in Nottinghill, Texas, the Californian home of Ozzy and Sharon Osborne, Malibu, and even a houseboat in the London Canals. With homes that feel like they come from another time, or have been around for a long time, they are often filled with her own bedware and linens. All slightly battered, and a bit messy – they do have that lived-in feel, rather than that just-stepped-out-of-a-magazine feel. Rachel Ashwell – Shabby Chic Inspirations and Beautiful Spaces is published by Cico Books and is $55. It is distributed by Book Reps.

Summer Houses in New Zealand are a world apart. Writer Andrea Stevens and photographer Simon Devitt have combined their talents to capture that special element about New Zealand architecture and their relationship with the summer in this country. This book covers architecturally-designed homes and holiday retreats from around NZ. They are urban, suburban, rural and coastal. What they have in common, according to the author, is that they address summer living. Some houses are newly finished, including the Architex Herne Bay house completed in 2010, a Pete Bossley-designed house from 2008 on the North Shore, and a marvelous Athfeild Architect-designed house in Wellington overlooking the Cook Strait. One of my favourites is the Sumich Chapin beach house on the Coromandel Peninsula. This house is actually at Matarangi Beach and we often used to walk past it and admire it when we rented a house there for a few years. It is tucked under some pine trees just set back from the beach and remarkable though the setting is, the house is even more remarkable. This has the iconic Herbst Architects house on Great Barrier with all its ply walls and central water tower. This book is perfect for anyone with an interest in New Zealand architecture – or anyone that loves beautiful buildings. Summer Houses by Andrea Stevens and photographed by Simon Devitt. It is published by Penguin and is $60. Available now – while the sun is shining…

By Anya Brighouse
7 January 2011


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