From Africa With Love

Hi All,

My name is Anna Marcus and I am an interior styling addict from Sydney, Australia. Although I've been living in this beautiful country since my early thirties, my roots stem from the oh-so-exotic country of Uzbekistan, formerly part of the USSR.

A few years ago my day job as an accountant was beginning to leave me dissatisfied. I started dreaming about leaving it all behind and turning my hobby of decorating my home with knick knacks from around the globe into something a little more full time.

Finally I took the leap from the corporate world and signed up for a Diploma in Creative Visual Arts specialising in Interior Styling.  In the course of my studies I came across the names of several theories that I had been using intuitively for years.

I find inspiration in the cultural artefacts I come across on my travels. I believe in mixing textures, looking at everything from a different angle, and finding a sort of eclectic unity in mismatched objects brought from the four corners of the globe. And although my friends keep telling me how lovely the house looks like, I quite often ponder “When should you stop using the word eclectic and start calling it by its true name ie tasteless?”

I like to reinterpret pieces and make them into artworks of my own, for instance, from my last trip to Cape Town’s craft markets I brought papier mache bowls made out of tin paper wraps. They are very colourful but cannot be used for anything except maybe peanuts or paperclips, so I decided to turn them into art and voila!

My husband left South Africa 30 years ago but my in-laws are still there so every year we pay them a visit.  This year will be my fifth trip there.  I love going there; Cape Town is such a beautiful city, its position between the mountains and the sea makes it so unique in so many ways.  My trip starts with a visit to the local craft market and I never leave empty-handed.  Our home is full of African artefacts -masks, wooden figurines, plates, hand-painted tablecloth, etc. In fact, the entrance hall in my home is decorated entirely with objects from South Africa and is a tribute to African art and craft, including the beautiful storage cabinet made of precious yellow wood unique to that continent, as well as the dining display unit in our dining room.  Both pieces belonged to my husband's ancestors, he shipped them over here when leaving Cape Town 30 years ago.

I love the wooden figurines above. The one in the hall is called "The colonial guy" and the one in the dining room is "A lawyer".

I will tell you the story about the bottles above the unit in my next post.

Until then

Ciao