Charming and elegant, yet without a trace of pretension, this unique Cape Town cottage is a masterclass in irreverent style.

WORDS Robyn Alexander PHOTOGRAPHY Warren Heath/Bureaux STYLING Sven Alberding

This Cape Town, South Africa cottage is as utterly individual as its owner – a local hotelier renowned equally for her eccentricity, her generosity and her indefatigably stylish interiors. Located in one of the city’s most sought-after suburbs, it was originally built in the 1920s.

Like quite a few similar homes 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 verandah. 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 homeowner, all this was catnip. An avowed maximalist with a penchant for vintage furniture, oversized bathrooms, multiple places to sit and read a book, and “staying home” whenever possible, she created precisely what she desired in this cottage.

The dining room features wooden panelling painted in the owner’s signature green-beige wall colour and a scrubbed wooden table surrounded by mismatched vintage chairs. The blue and white porcelain bowl is part of her extensive collection of antique serveware, and the metal candlestick was purchased at a local vintage store.

In a three-month renovation after she purchased the property in 2019, she took the unusual step of reducing its bedroom count from three to two. The result is that the two bedrooms are now enormous, and each with 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 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 downscale 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 that is now in use in the courtyard at her hotel.

Her signature wall colour, 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 but 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.

The owner’s flair for unusual colour selection is matched by a true collector’s sensibility. Sourced from auctions, vintage retailers and online searches, her extensive hoard of antique and original furnishings is the stuff of local legend. The mix is seemingly offhand but actually carefully considered, and includes a beautiful inlaid wood daybed, glass-fronted burnished teak bookshelves, an eccentric variety of seating, and an old scrubbed wooden kitchen table. These items are perfectly offset by an eclectic blend of pattern and colour in the soft furnishings. There are old-fashioned floral chintz fabric covers for the plush armchairs in the living room and a grand, fully upholstered bedstead, as well as vintage rugs and lamps and a plethora of memorabilia and artworks.

These are interiors where both whimsy and luxury are accorded high status; 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 – on display is meticulously considered. The final result is a home characterised by discreet charm, subtle yet powerful energy, and an immensely generous spirit.