Photographs Warren Heath
Text Robyn Alexander
Styling Sven Alberding
Graciously charming and elegant, yet without the slightest trace of pretension, this unique Cape Town cottage is a masterclass in layered, vintage-inflected and resolutely irreverent style.
As utterly individual as its owner – a local hotelier renowned equally for her eccentricity, her generosity and her indefatigably stylish interiors – this Cape Town cottage in one of the city’s most sought-after suburbs was originally built in the 1920s. Like quite a few similar builds in the area, the house is not quite Edwardian, and not exactly Art Deco either – rather, the architecture is a quirky blend of the two, combining square exterior pillars with an embellished interior arched lintel, a wide central passageway and an unusually curvaceous corrugated-iron roof over its front veranda. It seems likely that it was first built as a farm manager’s home, back when this area was still in an early phase of its development.
For the magpie creator of its unique current interior design, all this was catnip. An avowed maximalist with a penchant for vintage furniture, oversized bathrooms, multiple places to sit down and read a book and (whenever possible) “staying home”, she created precisely what she desired in this cottage. A three-month renovation following hard on the heels of her purchase of the property in 2019 took the unusual step of reducing its bedroom count from three to two – with the result that the two bedrooms are now enormous, and each sports an almost equally spacious adjacent bathroom. The changes also included the addition of beautiful old wooden exterior shutters that add both atmosphere and privacy to the front facade of the house, and the creation of a plunge pool in an old-fashioned, galvanised steel plaasdam (farm dam) style, painted in jaunty green and cream stripes.
The cottage was very much a downscaling property for the owner in terms of both size and formality, but her wealth of interior-design experience meant that she knew from the outset exactly how she would furnish and decorate its various spaces. Having moved here from a much larger dwelling, she happily let go of items that were too big to fit – such as an enormous, four-metre long dining table, for example, which is now in use in the courtyard at her hotel.
Her signature wall colour, as also seen in the hotel, has been used throughout the cottage: it is a remarkable green-tinged, sandy beige shade that shouldn’t really work in interiors at all. But of course, it somehow absolutely does. As room upon room unfolds through the house, the overall feel is both tranquil and beautifully cosy, augmenting the sense of spaces that have developed and settled into place over time without ever being self-consciously styled.
Much like “Southern Gothic” US designer Furlow Gatewood, a similarly singular creator of interiors, the owner’s flair for unusual colour selection is matched by a true collector’s sensibility. Sourced from auctions to vintage retailers to online searching, her extensive hoard of antique and original furnishings is the stuff of local legend – and just some of it is on display here.
Most definitely the creations of someone for whom more absolutely is better, these are interiors where both whimsy and luxury are accorded the high status they so richly deserve; it’s also a home in which art, books of every persuasion, and eye-catching bric-a-brac pieces all play starring roles. Chaotic, however, it is not. The way items are “bunched” – to use the owner’s own description of the way she styled these spaces – together on display is meticulously considered, even though it might at first appear random. The final result is a home characterised by discreet charm, subtle yet powerful energy, and an immensely generous spirit.
