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The entrance to David’s new cottage studio echoes the symmetry of the main house. The extra-deep stoep serves as an outdoor living and dining room throughout the seasons. -
The courtyard garden has a strictly formal layout, defined by low concrete walls within which an exuberant mix of practical and ornamental plants has been encouraged to riot. Herbs, fruit trees, roses and perennials are flourishing thanks to the skills of local landscaper Henties de Villiers and fifth-generation Oudtshoorner Morkel Mulder. -
With its traditional deep stoep and central passage, the main house remains virtually unchanged. The garden, a deliberately chaotic mix of hardy favourites, was redone and is only two years old. -
In the dressing room of the cottage, Moorish tiles line the shower, a vintage shop counter provides storage for scarves and smalls, and a lifetime’s collection of shoes is ranged on floor-to-ceiling shelves. -
Face to face in the living room of the main house: a leather sofa from Klooftique and a lemoenhout riempie chair. The large painting above the sofa is by Marion Geiger. -
Built at the northern end of the property, the summerhouse looks south across a secluded courtyard to David’s studio cottage. The furnishings are a whimsical mix, largely rustic except for this antique corner chair. “Chairs are a weakness,” David says. “Whenever I see an unusual one, I buy it.” -
The northern side of the summerhouse has unglazed, shuttered window apertures that look out on to a charming wild strip of garden that borders the street. The vast wooden counter is another Oudtshoorn find – it was made to hold ostrich feathers. -
A number of pieces in the summerhouse, including this antique settee, wagon bed and chair, are from Graaff-Reinet and part of an inheritance. -
A fireplace is essential in Karoo winters, and the spacious bedsitting room of the cottage also has a large window to admit the winter sun. Come summer, the blinds are lowered and the room is kept in cool darkness. A painting by Michele Redelinghuys hangs above the fireplace and the corner screen is an assembly of works by Leon Vermeulen. Their glowing colours are reflected in the furnishings. -
In the kitchen, David ripped out all the built-in cupboards and made it “very Karoo… very cosy.” He found the dresser in Oudtshoorn. -
In the sleeping area of the room, colours are more monochromatic. A large German cabinet holds prized ceramics and African pieces that David began collecting in Johannesburg many years ago. Curtains of handprinted Zimbabwean fabric screen the dressing room. -
David in his summerhouse, which is furnished with a mix of collected and inherited pieces.
WORDS Laurian Brown IMAGES Dook PRODUCTION Annemarie Meintjes
Furnished with treasures and memories from a lifetime of collecting, an interior designer’s Oudtshoorn retreat is an intermingling of country charm and cosmopolitan flair.
All Karoo towns have their own rustic appeal, but Oudtshoorn has panache. The flamboyant spirit of the feather barons lives on in its lavish sandstone buildings with their broekielace fretwork – and in its feisty charm.
Interior designer David Strauss succumbed to this charm five years ago while looking for a house to buy for once-a-month getaways from Cape Town. He found a solid old sandstone classic, built in the town’s Victorian heyday, in West Bank. No palace this: a deep stoep, a string of small rooms off a wide central passage, the only flourish a wagon-wheel precast fence. Some renovation was necessary, but the age of the house meant the exterior could not be modified and any alterations would have to be undertaken under the strict eye of the heritage authorities.
“I was a bit lost to start off with because I knew nobody,” says David. “But this is such a friendly town. And everybody knows everybody else, which is very helpful. If you get stuck, you just ask somebody, anybody.”
It took only a few enquiries for help to come flooding in, in the capable form of builder Seun de Jager, landscaper Henties de Villiers, and multitalented mine of local information Morkel Mulder. Their combined skills helped David to create the spacious retreat, which he has now made his home. He keeps only a small pied-à-terre in Cape Town and spends as much time in Oudtshoorn as his work will allow. “Which is wonderful, because it’s quiet here; you can do all your admin, and the city is rush-rush-rush.”
The main house, where his mother lives, has remained basically unchanged. “I removed two interior walls to make bigger rooms and ripped out most of the built-in cupboards, but that was about it.” His next step was to build a cottage studio for himself right next to it.
“And then I thought: Why not build a summerhouse? And it’s worked so well, because it has created a courtyard. I’ve always been a courtyard person. I like places to be enclosed. It gives you a sense of being elsewhere, not in suburbia.”
David had more than enough furniture and art for both the main house and the summerhouse. Some of his most precious things are inherited; the rest come from a lifetime of collecting, each piece selected for its appeal and intrinsic quality, and arranged with the same unerring eye.
“It’s eclectic, not typical old-house. But I wanted to respect the house and be sympathetic to its age. My furniture all seemed to fit in easily and I hope there’s harmony. I choose things only because I like them. I can remember the day and place I bought each item, but I often can’t remember the artist or the maker. The meaning of something is much more important to me than a name or value.”
