A keen collector’s retro residence
For this aspiring architect with a passion for retro furniture and homewares, the only way to stop building one collection is to start another one
Three knocks on the front door of Bee Newman’s Federation-style West Hobart home and Marbles is at the door with a friendly bark.
I’ve seen the rottweiler bitsa on Instagram carrying the hashtag #marblebonce. “He had a really huge head when he was a pup,” Bee laughs as she explains the meaning of “bonce”. It’s even bigger now.
Thirty-year-old Bee, an architecture student and director at Hobart’s Next 50 Architects, shares the home with her lighting designer partner Aron Webb. The central hall of the 1910 home leads to a 1980s extension out the back. “A cabbie once told me he used to live here in the early ’80s and thought the new addition was really swanky,” she laughs.
Two bedrooms flank the hallway, each with a fireplace. Original floorboards creak from the weight of 100 years of footsteps as we make our way to the kitchen and dining room, with its pink laminex benches, jaunty Le Creuset pots and a healthy dose of “retrostalgia” courtesy of Bee’s passion for vintage.
“I’m not a slave to any particularly era,” says Bee, but it’s clear she has a penchant for the 1970s. She has an entire cabinet of amber glass, moulded plastic swivel chairs, Namco stools, bright yellow moulded-plastic side tables by Kartel and Tessa armchairs. All are sourced from op shops or during what Bee calls eBay bidding frenzies. “The plastic wrap was still on the stools when I bought them,” she says. “The Tessas I got from my step-grandmother’s sister. They still had the purchase tag on them, which I can’t bring myself to remove.”
Bee’s passion for collecting is serious. “I have boxes of stuff under the house, which I rotate regularly,” she says. “It’s a great way to refresh the house now and then.”
But her red and white Iplex bakelite kitchen canisters are on permanent display.
“I only collect things I use,” she says. “They can’t just look pretty. I also like to research what I buy so that I can understand them as best as possible. I can’t just put something on a shelf and not wonder where it came from.”
Her passion for research seems like a rabbit hole. When does it end? “When I’m on to the next thing. I’ve probably got five or 10 collections going in my mind at any given time,” Bee says.
Details and stories are clearly important. Looking at the 1960s Parker sideboard in her bedroom, she points out the fine craftsmanship, expressed ends and the tapered handles. “Now compare that to these drawers,” she says, pointing to a fourdrawer tallboy. “The ends [mitred butt joints] are not as resolved, the drawer bottoms are ply and failing. It’s a Parker knock-off, but Parker themselves were replicating the original Danish designs.”
Plants fill the fireplace cavity in her bedroom but there is no wardrobe, no pile of clothes. “I keep my clothes in a separate room. I like to wake up clean and fresh, without having to look at a messy bedroom.”
Bee acquired the Hayson bedhead with its unusual kick at each end after an eBay bidding war. An artwork by Fernando de Campo hangs over the bed. “It’s such a happy thing to wake up to,” she says.
On the mantelpiece in the lounge room, a collection of antique silverware seems almost at odds with Bee’s otherwise modern aesthetic. “They’re a gift from a client whose house we’re building,” she says, describing a highly energy-efficient prefabricated home made out of cross-laminated timber.
Her work, specialising in prefabricated construction, is in contrast to the style of her 1900s home but that epitomises Hobart.
“We’ve got some friends staying from Norway and they love the variety and diversity of Hobart’s housing,” she says. “There’s something from every era, right next to each other. This area’s great for that.”