Message In A Bottle

Hi All,

I know I promised to tell you the story about the bottles but then I become extremely busy and for a fantastic reason.  Last week I graduated from ISCD with a Diploma in Creative Visual Arts in Interior Styling, so from no on I hold an official licence to kill!

Back to the bottles.  It all started when we were visiting Bali a few years ago. We were driving along a bumpy dirt road when I spotted something unusual: in the middle of nowhere was a shop with a jumble of glass objects strewn around the ground out the front: bowls, glasses, plates, sculptures of animals and flowers, of all possible shapes and sizes. I spotted a tall, black bottle and immedaitely fell in love. Although it cost thousands in the local currency and less than 100AUD, we bargained long and hard in the best tradition of the free market.  The next question was how we were going to bring this baby back to Oz.  Luckily we were travelling business class, so we just bubble wrapped it and my long-suffering husband took it with us on the plane.

From that moment on, the quest for more bottles began.  I am always on the lookout for them wherever we shop and it is very rare that we return from an overseas trip empty-bottle-handed.  The round, brown bottle in the picture above came with us all the way from South Africa and it now graces the wine rack in our dining room.

This cute little bottle was found in a small antique shop in one of the many fishermen villages along the coast of Cape Town.  I found a place for it in my younger daughter’s bathroom together alongside a small frog bought in Park Guell in Barcelona.

I am sure we all love travel and we all have different reasons why we love doing it.  I do not even want to start naming those reasons because soon I will be out of cyber space, I just want to say briefly that for me travelling is a constant search for inspiration no matter how unconventional it might be, whether it is a Louis Vuitton window display, or the colours and vibrancy of a Venetian fruit market, or it is my lunch served to me at Noma on a piece of thick round felt instead of a traditional plate. And although my home is not so big and I’ve just finished re-decorating it, I always manage to find one more inch of space to place my latest acquisition.

Denmark is not only famous for having the #1 restaurant in the world, it is also known everywhere for its classical and unique and beautiful Scandinavian wooden toys.  No wonder then that when I saw these in a shop, I immediately fell in love. The monkey with the long arms that also act as hooks is very cute while the smooth round-shaped mother and baby birds have interchangeable heads and bodies. These lovely creatures now share a space on the bookshelf beside my older daughter’s favourite reads.  Oh, those Danish!

 

Before I go, I would like to share with you my latest conquest, this time I didn’t have to go anywhere, except to fetch my credit card.  This little lamb is made out of cardboard by Karton.  I saw a picture of it in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Living lift-out and just couldn’t resist. This curly creature now leaves on the top of an antique hat box and although at least half a century separates them, they match each other perfectly, wouldn’t you agree?

Now I can go and when I return, I would like to share with you more memories from Noma.

Until then

Ciao

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