Moving to an apartment in Herne Bay meant embracing reinvention for Peter and Annie Webb – but art is still at the heart of their lives
PARALLEL UNIVERSE
IN THREE TALL WOMEN, British actress and former Labour Party politician Glenda Jackson, plays a 90-year-old widow: proud, tough, unsentimental. Annie Webb, just back from New York where she caught the production on Broadway, marvels at the actress’s stamina and presence. “She’s 82,” she says. Long-haul travel, an art-filled adventure walking the streets of Williamsburg and the East Village, has tired her somewhat. But it hasn’t slowed Annie down.
When she and Peter Webb bought their Herne Bay, Auckland apartment off the plans two years ago, the idea was to divide their time between this lock-and-leave pad in the city and their beach house in Orua Bay. They took a pragmatic approach to the move. “It’s a big thing that so many people in their 70s go through,” says Annie, “downsizing, altering your lifestyle. But you have to push forward to create a new place.”
Having established Webb’s auction house in 1976, it’s fair to say the couple had accumulated a good collection of art and antiques. Much of the furniture had to go. That must have been heart wrenching? Annie is adamant it was not. “It’s sad because nobody seems to want antiques anymore but we kept our two best pieces – a 17th-century inlaid oak chest and a circa 1830 circular occasional table - and once the rest had gone I never gave it another thought.” The art was divided between the two homes; what didn’t fit was sold. Annie sees the silver lining. Andrew McLeod’s Kowhaiwhai Triptych, a large work they had envisaged as the hero piece of the apartment living room, proved too overwhelming for the compact space. “The art curator at Fletcher Challenge had always wanted it so now it hangs in the corridor on the way to the lunchroom with lots of people walking past. I’m happy about that.”
The over-sized McLeod was perhaps a portent that the best-laid plans sometimes go off course. The library reverted to a study when they realized it was a much smaller room than either had imagined. “Peter couldn’t bear to part with one single book from an enormous collection gathered over a lifetime so we sent them off in boxes to the beach house.” And Annie missed her villa garden more than she thought she would.
The Webbs ‘camped out’ for months in the apartment, side-byside in a pair of leopard-skin gilt-wood armchairs, as they slowly gathered the 19th-century classics, furniture with clean-lines, that the architectural style seemed to demand. Old friend James Peters of James Peters Design helped to source some great pieces. Then, when Peter fell ill, Annie and her good friend, interior designer Karin Montgomery-Spath, ran around town gathering samples and swatches to bring back to him for a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. If he didn’t like their finds, they’d be returned. “Peter has always had the eye and the knowledge. He is a truly artistic person who was ahead of his time. Back in the day when I’d go for a Sunday-afternoon snooze, I’d wake up to find that he had re-organized all the furniture.”
There was debate over some acquisitions – Annie wanted the massive Louis Poulsen pendants over the glass dining table, Peter’s curatorial eye saw the smaller versions - ultimately, though, any purchase was a shared decision. Then Peter had a stroke….
When friends used to ask Annie whether she was settling into apartment life, she thought the term ‘settling’ an odd one. She struggled to articulate how she felt. Then, one day, when an overseas visitor asked the same thing, it came to her: “I’m not settling down; I want to go out all the time!” “But that’s what apartment living is all about,” counselled the friend.
And so it is. Morning power strolls along the boardwalks of the harbour are usually followed by coffee out, a catch up with friends, or book hunting at the Leys Institute library. “The staff laugh at me because I always find it such a joy and say, ‘So much pleasure - and it hasn’t cost me a cent.’”
Annie has created a green-and-white balcony garden which she finds very enriching - “I used to get really hacked off raking the leaves off the courtyards in our Picton street villa anyhow” - and she’s even hosted a party for 35 which settled her qualms about entertaining in the smaller space.
Then there are the daily trips to see Peter in the Elizabeth Knox rest home. He has very many other regular visitors too including his two grand-children and his step-daughter, Sophie, whom he mentored into the art business and who always takes him two beers, but ends up drinking most of them. “There are good days and upsetting days,” says Annie. “A brain injury is a very strange thing but I’m hoping that maybe he might get better enough to go out to the beach house for a bit.”
When Annie, a Lincolnshire lass, and Peter, a North Shore boy who trained as a typographer, first met, he was the visionary who had set up New Zealand’s first contemporary dealer gallery – although he admits he had to gather away his bed-linen of a morning to get the tiny space ready for viewings – and had founded an art auction house. “At my interview for the job as receptionist there, Peter asked me which artists I liked and I couldn’t remember a single name.” She went on not only to marry the proprietor but, over 35 years, to become an integral part of the business. “Peter was entrepreneurial, always ahead of his time, while I sat in the little office out back and worried about money.” That’s not quite true. Among other ideas, she channelled her passion for vintage clothing and fabrics into another arm of the auction house. “It was a labour of love, we never made any money out of those clothes. I wish I had kept more of them.” Nevertheless, plastic boxes filled with outfits are now in storage in the hope that soon, Annie’s granddaughter Mala (12) will take them out for a spin. “She’s still at the ripped jeans and T-shirt stage.”
Adjusting to her new situation, Annie is upbeat. She’s looking forward to a visit with her daughter in London and, meanwhile, there’s plenty to keep her occupied. This week, that includes watching a film on André Leon Talley, former editor-at-large of Vogue, at the documentary festival and attending the Auckland Art Fair. “I don’t want to buy things anymore but there is one spare wall in the bedroom.” She has her eye on something digital to fill the gap, perhaps a piece like artist Sam Taylor-Wood’s video portrait of David Beckham asleep that she saw at the V&A Museum a few years ago – which she pronounces “so very calm and quite beautiful”. Until then, she has something else to snuggle up to. A furry soft-toy lion called Toby – part of an ongoing collection of lions and a gift from Peter many years ago.
‘It’s a big thing that so many people in their 70s go through - downsizing, altering their lifestyle. But you have to push through’