FROM THE EDITOR
My tutor at journalism school was a seasoned news hound called Geoff Black. He had a rugged face, a comb-over of wiry curls and a huge enthusiasm for a tight news story. “Lucid, crystal-clear prose,” he’d urge as we hammered away at typewriters. There were a raft of rules: active sentences, short paragraphs, pyramid structure. And, most importantly, there was this mantra: “If in doubt, leave it out.”
I hear that mantra in my head, as I look at the houses we select for NZ House & Garden, because, like Geoff, our homeowners are excellent editors. They know the power of leaving stuff out.
The fascinating thing is that while almost every homeowner I encounter adheres to this rule, they all have different ideas about WHAT should be left out.
Our working title for this special themed issue was “Max-Min”. We wanted to contrast stylish homeowners who collect and display their treasures, with stylish homeowners who like clean, uncluttered surfaces. At one end of the spectrum, there’s Nicole Stewart (page 60) whose bedroom is smothered with cobweb-festooned portraits of other people’s ancestors. At the other, there’s Guy Tarrant and Debra Millar (page 66) whose sleek home is furnished with a distillation of only the “really important”.
But despite all the variety, there’s a common thread through every story in this magazine. Our homeowners all have a set of rules around the personal style they want to achieve, and they edit in accordance with those rules.
No Kiwiana kitsch, says Jodie Robertson, whose lovely Hawke’s Bay home is on page 30. Industrial furniture must be kept to a minimum. And there will be no red, anywhere. Her style is layered, quirky and treasure-filled – but because of her rules it has an inner coherence. It works.
For Waiheke’s tiny house owner Briar Hale (page 70) the rules are nothing plasticky – and no bulk buys of anything.
And so on. Even Timaru gardener Rosy McBride (page 112) has her own set of style rules: no blues in the red and green flower bed; no reds with the yellow and creams.
Moral of the story? If you want to put your own personal stamp on your home follow these three steps: 1) Describe your look; 2) Set rules around things that don’t fit; 3) If in doubt, leave it out.
And if all that sounds like too much hard work, ignore steps one to three and do your own thing. Because the marvellous thing about home, unlike school, is that it’s the one place you can break the rules whenever you want.