Afro Chic ELEGANCE
Although the heavy, wooden ceiling beams and curvaceously paned glass doors of this lavish mansion, in Cape Town’s Constantia, suggest historic origins, the house was actually built in the late sixties. “When we first walked into the entrance hall a few years ago, we experienced an old-world sense of grand proportions, but it was those handsome doors looking out towards the garden that clinched it for us,” says Philip Tyers, who owns the house with his wife Nicky.
While the house, a traditional design in the form of an H, had become “a bit of a rabbit warren”, with various add-ons over time, “it had exceptional bones,” says Nicky. “We felt inspired to create something really wonderful.”
Philip and Nicky are the design brains behind Colonial House Design, an interior design company and shop they launched 17 years ago, now located in the original Cape Quarter, in De Waterkant.
The couple spent nine months transforming their house into one that would accommodate “a modern lifestyle in a traditional framework,” as Philip describes it. The result is the ultimate in luxury: high-ceiling rooms with natural stone floors (except in the bedrooms), filled with decor pieces that tend to be monumental and bold in scale. Once “a big, lost space full of electric cables and roof trusses”, the couple says the attic was converted into bedrooms and bathrooms for their children, India, 12, and Hudson, six. “They like the feel of having their own house within a house,” says Nicky.
A considerable amount of the furniture on display in their home was designed and made by Philip: every kind of sofa, cabinet, cupboard, chair or table you can imagine – sophisticated designs with a sculptural element and superior finishes – which he produces with his team of carpenters at his Observatory workshop. They also create works in resin, such as the massive Elisabeth Frink-style head that stands in one of the small courtyards.
The Tyers are among the first designers to do Afro-chic in Cape Town. Since then their personal style has moved to what Nicky calls “fusion contemporary” with the introduction of Eastern design. Life-sized buddhas pop up in unusual places around the house; standing, sitting, contemplating life in corners or holding incongruous rosaries in outstretched hands.
Still, Nicky emphasises that the house is not an extension of the shop, so they went to great lengths to distinguish it. “It’s a home we’ve had great fun with, a home in which the art is more important than anything else you see. Philip is really quite an enthusiastic collector, we have no walls left to hang it.”