Kitchen sync points the way to a chic cuisine.
Melissa Penfold
NO MATTE R WHAT STYLE your kitchen – modern, traditional or eclectic – the right accessories on benchtops and shelves will add instant edge, but make sure they look good and bring daily joy. It’s the quickest way to elevate the aesthetics and functionality – and a great way to show off kitchen kit, and have them at hand. ACCESSORISE Decorating a benchtop is like getting dressed. Accessories are the elements that separate your kitchen from the crowd and give it individuality. Don’t jam-pack surfaces. Mix styles but keep things organised. If you have lots of small objects, a tray is a good way to do this. Make collections feel edited and well displayed. THE RULE OF THREE Always work with decorative pieces in uneven numbers. Start with a horizontal object such as a bowl or tray then add a tall, vertical piece like a vase or jug, then something low and bulky – such as a three-tier stand or stack of plates. It’s foolproof. SURPRISE YOURSELF Use banal things on your benchtop. A basket of shiny apples, a bunch of pencils in a squat vase, or a cauliflower or cabbage in an urn set on the benchtop or island might be more chic than flowers. YOUR COLLECTIONS, WELL DISPLAYED If it’s worth collecting, it’s worth displaying – don’t separate the pieces of your china, glassware, trays, pots or pans – keep them together. Hang them on the wall, line them along shelves or group under a kitchen island. Anything en masse looks good. Group items together on a shelf – even basic white chain-store plates become beautiful when there are lots of them. Pile a stack of white plates on the benchtop. Very little money, but lots of style.
1 ‘Grove’ round baskets large, $55, and small, $40, livingbydesign.net.au 2 In the New England state of Vermont a country kitchen is enlivened with a jug of hydrangeas, shelves of white china and breadboards in Nora Murphy’s Country House Style: Making Your Home a Country House, vendomepress.com 3 ED Ellen Degeneres ‘Charcoal Grey Lines’ mug, $16, plate, $16, and pasta bowl, $20, royaldoulton.com 4 ‘Modern’ fluted jug, $129, royalcopenhagen.com.au 5 Sydney-based designer Lynda Kerry adds bowls of green apples and cutlery in oriental containers to her benchtops for instant warmth and rustic modernity in her harbourside eastern suburbs kitchen. 6 Melissa Penfold piles shiny red apples and kumera in bowls and baskets with plates lined in wall racks at her NSW southern highlands country house. 7 The Cape Town home of restaurateur Jacques Eramus features vegetables in baskets on the kitchen island for a pop of character. 8 Robert Gordon ‘Mason’ pasta bowl in Khaki, $17, and ‘Conical’ jug in Ink Blue Indigo, $70, livingbydesign.net.au