Kachasu

My new study is vast.  It was Kit’s bedroom but I have shuffled her into what used to be my study and am in the process of serious art deco work in there.  The wall above the dado rail is that gorgeous deco green, the walls below an offwhite and all the trim (dado, pelmets and skirting) black. 

What brought this on was Poirot (the David Suchet series).  As most of you know by now, we are big deco fans and are building a real monument to it, so the thing to watch is Poirot.  In his flat he has a room painted in this way and it is so beautiful I want to orgasm on the spot.  Ya ya – sad, but what can I say? 

I found a green and black deco light on Long Road, huge thing like a beehive, and that began the process.  We have now mostly finished the house, well, the restoration part.  Every room has extraordinary light fittings in it which I have found in all sorts of strange places.  But, back to the study.  It helps that the trim is all original so the lines and curves are already in place, then it’s just the colour which we are now fixing up.  Colour was an intrinsic part of the deco era.  Vibrant colour, with a fair amount of black, reds, oranges and greens.  My Artist and I cannot agree on the merit of deco fabrics.  I love them, he makes vomit noises.  So we stick to venetian blinds.  But this is my study, so if I can find fabric that is close enough it is going up.  Once the chrome light covers are in place, I don’t think I will want to ever leave that room.  Mind you, I feel that way about all the rooms in the house.  Good thing really.

My house will not be of any interest to anyone keen on modern beige or simplicity.  Thank God. 

As an aside to the study, we often trawl the neighbourhood looking at houses for sale.  We know that most people today rip out the deco and toss it.  Right around the corner from me, just such a travesty has happened.  Good news for us though – the woman has said we must just take the fireplace.  We don’t need anymore in the house – already have gorgeous ones.  But this a giant beast of a thing – all terrazzo, black and green.  Easily three metres long.  So, we will pick it up on tuesday and install it on the back verandah for use as the front of  a braai.  It’s like heaven finding things like that.

So, I now have a modern-ish wrought iron double bed cluttering up my study.  It must go.  Anyone keen?  I want to get a fold out couch for guests, with a lumpy bit in the middle so that it discourages them from staying too long.

South Africans, generally, are peasants as far as architectural history and heritage go.   

Artist and I get very sad and angry driving around watching people destroy beautiful homes, commercial and apartment buildings.  It doesn’t only happen in the CBD.  As a small example of this horrible mentality, there is an extraordinary red brick house just up the road built in the early 30s.  It is in need of love but in very good shape. Back then they built to last.  I was showing a friend, as it might be coming up for sale soon.  He said “I will have to plaster over those walls.” 

I told him he is not allowed to buy in Greenside because he is a barbarian.  He should buy in Parkhurst, where nobody gives a damn about anything and they are crap little places anyway.  I mean, really!  South Africans have no sense of history or its merit.  Artist and I often go on Sundays to look at houses and flats in deco areas.  We are not looking to buy, but we leave our names with the estate agents and say: “we want that fireplace/light/kitchen unit/pot – if they are one of these horrible renovators.” 

My house is yellow brick.  With iron ore in it.  Most people see it and think:  “old.”  Yes – it is.  But the quarry that made this particular brick closed down in the 60s and it has a very unique look and feel.  It is purely Johannesburg and of the period.  It is beautiful.  Plaster it?  Are you off your head?  Give it another 30 years and my house will be 100 years old.  It will be a rare thing.  An original piece of Jozi history.  See with an eye for the future.

 I have seen gorgeous cast concrete (terrazzo) fireplaces smashed up in the street as someone “improves”.  There is a Westcliffe and Parktown North heritage trust and much of Greenside is protected by another trust.  But it doesn’t seem to stop people from being stupid and desperately guilty of bad taste.

There is something wrong with South Africans that everything has to be about NEW.  We should preserve history, especially architectural – that is what makes a city great.  Gives it flavour.  It breaks my heart to see what people do.  I want to go up to them and shout in their ear and then maybe chop off a limb.

Neil Fraser, an urban renewal expert, issues a weekly newsletter called CityChat.  I love it.  He talks about the idiocy of what councils let people do and the atrocities being perpetrated in town against old buildings.  Sometimes he makes a difference.

And let me not get started on the oceans of ugly, poorly built cluster houses… 

I am grateful I live where I do.  There are serious rules.  Greenside proper, rather than Greenside Extension, is heavily protected.  Rules like no corrugated anything, can only build a certain distance close to the street.  Your walls/fence can only be built out of certain materials etc.  Also, it’s one of two remaining dry suburbs in the country, which means no bottle stores.  There is one in Emmarentia (cannot move outside for drunken yobos) and one in Greenside ext.   You cannot put up billboards or anything as gauche. 

I don’t understand why most South Africans want to live in a clone of America, where everything is disposable and built just for the moment.  Why can’t we find the balance between European and our own approaches to historical architecture?

It has nothing whatsoever to do with holding onto a past that was fraught with ugliness and abuse.  This is architecture for heaven’s sake.  It is guilty of nothing other than, often, beauty that cannot be seen by eyes which view mass produced stuff from Mr Price or Bakos Brothers (yes folks, that is mass produced) as having any value.