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A room to live in : Marguerite is a vegetarian, a choice she made after having breast cancer, but she loves cooking all the good things for everyone else. -
A room to live in : The kitchen is often where her sons' friends gather. Dugald Junior (in the yellow shirt) and Zandy (in the white) are both accomplished sportsmen. -
A room to live in : The mobile inspired by Alexander Calder was custom-designed and made by Jamie B Hannah. One of the shapes incorporated is that of a surfboard, in tribute to keen surfer, Dugald Senior's favourite one. -
A room to live in : Persimmons echo the autumn colours of the liquid amber tree outside the kitchen window. -
A room to live in : The antique Berkel ham slicer, a gift from Marguerite's brother-in-law who bought it in Parma, has pride and place in the kitchen. -
A room to live in : A true harvest feast. The kitchen island isone of Marguerite's favourite features. -
A room to live in : A true harvest feast. The kitchen island, one of Marguerite's favourite features, is used as both a work surface and an informal dining table.
PHOTOS: Mark Williams | PRODUCTION: Tina-Marie Malherbe | WORDS: Alma Viviers
Marguerite Macdonald’s kitchen in her home just outside Cape Town is a space for eating, drinking, sharing, meeting and laughing.
It is a grey May morning in Cape Town when I first visit the home of Marguerite Macdonald, who owns the well-known Mavromac fabric house.
Walking through the giant front door of the home she shares with her husband, Dugald, and their two grown sons, I feel, for an instant, like Alice who has just drank the potion as I am dwarfed by the exaggerated scale of the vast entrance.
But I quickly resume my normal size as I move through a cosy lounge area into the kitchen, a space unlike any I have ever experienced. The cathedral-like height forces me to look up, where a dense row of wooden trusses spans the long, rectangular space that incorporates a kitchen area, dining area, informal lounge, fireplace and piano. A scullery, potting area and television room lead off from the main room.
Clever spatial planning
Everything here is larger than life – the marble-topped island, the long dining table and, most of all, the oversized Alexander Calder-inspired mobile. “I don’t like puny, I like bold; I don’t like skinny, I like fat,” she says. “The scale of the space required it.”
But Marguerite admits that the kitchen turned out bigger that even she had imagined during the planning. “Putting it together was daunting. It looked like we would drown in the space – I wanted it to be both large and warm but thought we would never achieve that intimacy.”
Yet, even on this rather gloomy day, her clever spatial planning of creating rooms within the room has clearly resulted in a comfy space where I quickly feel at home. We sit around the kitchen island as she tells me how she designed the space and, in fact, the whole house.
The family has lived on the property for 14 years, “But the old house was all wrong for the terrain,” Marguerite explains. So, they had it demolished and started from scratch to create a house that was not a showpiece but a place for them to really live in. True to her Zimbabwean heritage, Marguerite wanted to create an African house.
“A cross between the old colonial Zimbabwean house, the kind that I grew up with, and a Kenyan highlands house,” she says. “I wanted to take the same feeling to another level.” As a self-confessed obsessive when it comes to detail and proportions, Marguerite was not only involved with the look and feel but also with every single design element.
She points to thickness of the marble top of the island: “I’m a stickler for proportions,” she says. “If something is 1cm too thick or too wide, it really irks me.”
Connection to France and Italy
Design and architecture are two of her great passions but it is when she talks about food that she really comes alive. “I love to cook and I love to eat, I always want to feed people,” she laughs. “I’ve had a love for fantastic food ever since I could remember because I grew up in a family that enjoyed it.”
Marguerite is just as comfortable slipping on an apron and whipping up something for her sons’ friends who regularly pop in for a soccer game in the garden as she is closing a business deal. As we chat she chops parsley for a lunch-time pasta with a deft hand, relishes breaking open ripe figs and wrapping them in delicate silvers of just-sliced Parma ham.
Although she has never lived there, Marguerite has had a strong connection with Italy for the past 35 years, especially to the town of Parma, first through her husband’s rugby playing and later his business. Another influence is France where she lived as part of her French course through the University of Edinburgh.
She fondly remembers how her housemates gave her a Moulinex food processor, which she still owns, to encourage her cooking. “Although I do love French cooking, I prefer the less sophisticated Italian food – tasty, hearty dishes with honest flavours.”
Marguerite’s cooking is very much like her kitchen and certainly a reflection of her personality: Unfussy yet carefully considered and brimming with an abundance of different flavours.
• Mavromac: 011 444 1584, 021 797 4739, www.thegatehouse.co.za
