A grande dame with a generous spirit

PHOTOS: Micky Hoyle | PRODUCTION: Sumien Brink | WORDS: Elmari Rautenbach

A comfortable home for eight sounds more like chaos than stylish living, but the Hambly-Grobler family of Cape Town is evidence of how a warm, hearty home can also be covetously beautiful.

Beside a delicate Louis XIV chair with gold armrests and worn-silk upholstery stands a little dried tree with a white trunk. From each branch hangs a papier-mâché bird, colourfully but inexpertly painted. This piece of craft by a class of eight- and nine-year-olds was snapped up at a primary school auction. It looks strange, almost melancholic, in the plush main bedroom with its silver four-poster bed, crystal chandelier, embroidered-silk curtains and grey-velvet antique sofa.

A copy of Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis (Vintage) lies on a nearby table; in the dressing room, leather hatboxes are piled to the ceiling and pigeonholes packed with stilettos are alternated with vintage collectors’ gowns displayed on hangers; in the bathroom, modern tiles and chrome and mirrors combine seamlessly with the classic bath and an old-world windowsill – the perfect spot for imported bubble baths and a tea tray with Earl Grey.

So, why the tree? ‘It was magic: I simply had to have it,’ shrugs Michelle Hambly-Grobler. Its special place is later revealed…

Michelle’s businessman husband David meets me at the garden door, barefoot, with a pair of red reading glasses perched on his nose. It was about two years ago at this very spot, when Michelle enthusiastically wished to show him ‘their next home’, that he sceptically pointed out a massive crack in the wall and asked why he should be interested in a place where you could see right through a wall…

But today he pushes the gate open to reveal a glorious old lady of a double-storey house with a breathtaking view. From the stone patio you look out over purple-fig trees into the distance where Cape Town’s city bowl unfolds and the blue sea eventually fades into the yonder. Under the balcony, a dog chases its tail. Open doors beckon you into the kitchen where at least six teenage boys are wrangling over a card game.

Michelle appears, also barefoot, in white T-shirt and linen pants. Two girls with swimming towels run by and a tumble dryer hums somewhere in the background: ‘Our children determined what sort of house we would buy,’ says Michelle.

The sun filters through leaded-glass windows onto window seats and warms the fireplace’s green tiles. The oak floors are sanded and sealed in a matte finish, and the wooden doors boast their original brass knobs. On a rosewood stand, a red Buddha squats in plump repose.

Making their vision a reality

The couple met 10 years ago: ‘We were both already married, each with three children,’ says Michelle. ‘She fell for my body,’ teases David, placing a lacquered tray of cappuccinos on the table. ‘No; his cooking,’ she counters. Four years later they got married and are now the proud parents of a family of six children aged 10 to 16. There are four boys and two girls.

It’s around them that the household revolves. ‘I saw the house for the first time when I brought my daughter to a party here. I was dumbstruck by the extent of the property and the view,’ Michelle recalls. ‘Back then the house was in the Provençal style. That was the first thing we got rid of – the yellow and the lavender,’ she says.

Once the children had given their blessing, the house was bought and Michelle and David started making their vision for it a reality; restoring the house to its former glory as a 1900 Arts and Crafts movement gem. ‘It was a movement and period in which proper value was restored to craftsmanship, characterised by simplicity of design and the use of natural materials such as wood, beaten copper and pewter, and stylised floral motifs.’

‘We prefer to say we renewed rather than renovated the house. She’s a grand old lady who needed a face-lift.’ Neither money nor effort were spared in realising their dream. British blacksmith Sweetpea Smith did all the metalwork and burglar proofing in the Art-Nouveau style (the Arts and Crafts movement included many design elements from Art Nouveau), Nico Alberts made the curtains, and Bloemfontein woodworker, Spyker Coetzee, did the woodwork.

‘Spyker later confessed he’d spent three weeks on his knees in our bedroom while laying the hand-cut French-oak floor in a herringbone design,’ says David. To ensure that the main bedroom’s new wing matched the rest of the house, the gutters were imported from Germany and orange Broseley-style roof tiles were tracked down in Mpumalanga Province.

Once their Lacanche was installed, everything else fell into place

Then there was the French colossus in the kitchen… Michelle explains: ‘David had always wanted a Lacanche stove. For him the kitchen is the heart of the house, and the stove is the heart of the kitchen.’ Lacanche stoves, with their distinctive gas burners, enamel finishes and gleaming brass knobs, are adapted and built to clients’ individual specifications in a 179-year-old factory in France.

It wasn’t easy finding a local dealer but David tracked down an agent at The Culinary Equipment Company in Johannesburg. Stove buying later took an interesting turn: Michelle, who was previously in marketing, recently started up Cape Culinary Equipment in Cape Town in collaboration with the Johannesburg agent. They now import these stoves.

Once their Lacanche was installed, everything else fell into place. To double the size of the kitchen, a window made way for double doors that open onto the patio. That original window, with its beautiful stained glass, was then built into the main bedroom’s new bathroom for an uninterrupted view of Lion’s Head.

Once an unused passage next to the house, the dining room has a high glass roof and is lit by several wrought-iron lantern lights. It has large marble floor tiles imported from India and a long table that comfortably seats 22 people. On the top floor, an attic was converted into a bathroom for the boys. The former main bedroom was divided into two to create a bedroom for each of the girls with a shared bathroom in the middle.

At the Rooms on View Expo in Johannesburg last year, Michelle found mirrors framed with strips of perlemoen shell. These now hang everywhere in a salute to the Arts and Crafts movement. Their subtle colour play of petrol greens, blues and silver is reflected throughout the house … in a silken thread in a curtain, and in the wing of a little blue bird, made as a Grade 3 art project.

• Lacanche is available at Cape Culinary Equipment, 021 552 9550, and at The Culinary Equipment Company, 011 701 2200, www.culinary.co.za.