The Gentleman’s Flower Arranging Club (GFAC) is helping to grow the global trend of fresh-cut floral accessories for men.

GFAC creator Alwijn Burger, alias Blomboy, says, “This is really to reintroduce flowers into our daily lives, not as an extra luxury, but as a necessity.” It is true that we live in a floral kingdom, yet make little use of our treasure. In days past, great statesmen, warriors and poets have all worn flowers. And it’s a trend that’s starting to sweep the world: in hair, tucked into trousers, wound around wrists and behind the ears.

Alwijn shows a group of 10 men how to make a boutonnière, which he describes as “a symbol of a beautiful life and beauty in nature”. Each man is expected to make a buttonhole and a posy, choosing from buckets of fresh flowers in fugitive colours: mauves, rubies, yolky yellows and mother-of-pearl foliage.

The men are fleet and primed, stripping leaves, gathering blooms. “Nothing,” says Alwijn, “adds more panache to a gentleman’s appearance than a simple flower worn on the lapel.” It is a gesture that signifies culture and civilization and that opens up a whole new world of affordable beauty.

The GFAC Club meets monthly. E-mail info@blomboy.com for bookings. 

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Photographer Jac de Villiers creates exquisite portraits of a different nature.

Jac de Villiers is known for his portraits… of people. Then, a couple of years ago, he swapped human subjects for plants when he collaborated with chef Kobus van der Merwe on Strandveldfood, a book dedicated to cooking with indigenous plants of the West Coast. Jac photographed the plants – both edible and inspirational – in their natural habitat over a period of four seasons. This sparked the idea to bring succulents into the studio and shoot them in portrait format.

“I photograph succulents in my studio using dramatic lighting and a flat-grey background to highlight the form of the plants,” Jac says. “I have the same lighting approach when photographing people and plants, but that’s where the similarity ends. You have to engage a person – the success of the portrait depends on this interaction. A plant, on the other hand, doesn’t talk back. The term ‘plant portrait’ is really tongue in cheek.”

To capture and highlight the appeal of every blemish in the plant’s state of decomposition, there’s no editing in post-production. “I don’t sanitise the process by using Photoshop retouching to hide ‘imperfections’,” Jac says. “There’s often beauty in botanical decay.”

He prints his images with esteemed printer Tony Meintjes, using giclée printing on fine art paper.

For prices and information about exhibitions, go to Jac’s website at jacdevilliers.com.

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A quotation by Leonardo da Vinci sums up the spirit of Kobus van der Merwe’s tiny farm cottage near Paternoster: “Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.”

It makes sense that chef Kobus van der Merwe has chosen to live in the foothills of Kasteelberg, about 4 km from Paternoster on the West Coast, where hunter-gatherers and herders subsisted from as early as 600 AD on a diet of small game, shellfish and wild greens – not dissimilar to how Kobus lives today in a two-roomed worker’s cottage he renovated and extended to suit his spartan needs.

The cottage is situated on a farm amid hectares of undisturbed strandveld vegetation, giving Kobus access to an assortment of edible plants and herbs with evocative names: koekemakranka, stinkkruid, slangbessie and soutslaai jostle for space with samphire, a spindly, juicy marshland succulent mentioned by Shakespeare in King Lear, and which Kobus serves with delight at Oep ve Koep, his Paternoster restaurant.

Recently, says Kobus, he began experimenting with making his own vermouth – a kind of botanical alchemy where roots and herbs such as wild fennel, African sage and pelargonium are infused in alcohol before the liquid is added, drop by fragrant drop, to fortified wine to create the aperitif.

The kitchen, lounge and dining room occupy a single space, with a simple built-in fireplace and a 1950s wood-and-leather chair from Mozambique – a gift from his sister Freda – sat directly before it. A cartoon-like portrait of a man and a portable radio (painted by Kobus’s friend Roelie van Heerden), is suspended above a Jan Douglas Kantelknaap leather-and-wood table lamp that has a delightfully Heath Robinson feel to it.

A few classical LPs, personal mementoes and artefacts and an assemblage of cookbooks take up the rest of the room: Some of the tomes are by famous chefs, some are based on famous restaurants, and others are by famous chefs about famous restaurants (Frank Camorra’s MoVida and Ferran Adrià’s A Day at elBulli). For a world-renowned chef, Kobus’s kitchen is a remarkably simple affair consisting of a table-top cast-iron gas burner, a fridge, a sink and a few old pots and pans.

The main renovation to the house is an extended bathroom where Kobus installed a full-wall window that frames the veld dramatically and bathes the room in early-morning sunlight. It’s fitted with a vintage French tin bath enamelled on the inside.

The shower is a copper pipe jutting down from the ceiling with a rosette screwed onto it. The bathroom is bold and inviting – more bathroom with en-suite bedroom than the other way round.

A huge Roelie van Heerden abstract painting showing converging vertical lines and a small Louis Nel seascape decorate the bedroom. Two wooden boxes serve as bedside tables, making the space almost monastic in its simplicity.

Living in small spaces demands a discipline that forces one to choose only the essentials for daily life and discard the extraneous. Kobus’s sober and modest approach to home decor, cooking, writing and life in general are advocated and encouraged by trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, whose Paris apartment bears an uncanny resemblance to this farm cottage.

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A psychiatrist with no architectural expertise thoughtfully restored a small wooden house near Plettenberg Bay – a reminder of the importance of our surroundings to the wellbeing of our spirit.

Any visit to the Cape coast, I must confess, is always accompanied by a sense of apprehension. I doubt I will ever be able to identify with the relentless, stylistically suspect large-scale developments that squat in one of the most unique and ecologically sensitive biospheres in the world. Instead, I’m left speechless at the copious design opportunities being passed up to make way for conventional, up-country architectural schemes. 

So, I was pleasantly surprised to happen on a modest beach house in a Robberg hamlet, a stone’s throw from Plettenberg Bay. Not only is it a manifestation of its seaside setting but, more unexpectedly, it represents the design flair of psychiatrist Dr Pieter Cilliers in the form of a little wooden house! Perhaps his occupation has given him greater insight? 

The history of this sunken little bungalow, Houthuisie (wooden cabin), literally just a few strides from the snow-white beach, dates back to the 50s. Along with its neighbours, a few unobtrusive holiday units, it forms part of an agriculturally zoned property of five hectares, right next to the sea. Over the years their various owners – and their children and grandchildren – have resisted the temptation to either plough or develop the land. 

Coincidentally, I spent a Christmas holiday with my own family, some 40 years previously, in this same Robberg hamlet, in another little house that, I remember, was held together with spit and God’s grace. Now, four decades on, resisting wind and weather, it still looks almost exactly the same! Around here, you see, renovation means replacing a plank or two each year, or perhaps applying a lick of paint when the swollen wooden doors just cannot open or close anymore, or possibly installing another rainwater tank.

Over time Houthuisie’s wooden construction, like most things, became worse for wear and, just like the fable of The Three Little Pigs, structurally dangerous. So much so that a year or three ago, Pieter finally decided to fix things up once and for all, and replace the “shack” under the existing roof. And, in line with the modus operandi of ’n boer maak ’n plan (a farmer makes a plan), this psychiatrist did not obtain expert – read: professional architectural – advice. Instead, he contemplated the way the wind blew and the position of the sea, and thought about the lifestyle and needs of his family of four (and relations) and their annual Christmas holiday, with sand between their toes, and damp costumes and wet spots on the rugs and furniture. 

All this mulling and musing finally led to establishing a central room, as wide as the roof span allowed, for preparing food, washing dishes, eating, sleeping, lazing about, chatting and more eating. This spacious area, like three of the five bedrooms, opens onto the broadest stoep that the rafters could cover. 

The tiny bedrooms are kept simple, with a loose cupboard and double bed as the only furniture. But they all have the added luxury of en-suite bathrooms (although not much larger than the inside of an airplane cabin), kitted out with a warm shower and a just-above-chest sea view. There’s also an extra bathroom with a bath, just next to the multipurpose living area, for when granny visits, as well as a low-slung loft space for the grandchildren – one day. 

Do not, however, assume that the seeming informality was not planned or isn’t tasteful. Quite the contrary. Well-considered graphic artworks adorn the walls and comfortable, stylish furnishings fill the interior.

Apart from this careful and innovative holiday planning, Houthuisie’s architectural merit lies in its pragmatic, honest structure, without pretence, frills and formalities. Low-key is the mantra as, along with its minimal carbon footprint, this sustainably ecofriendly cabin disappears in the lush, pristine beauty of its natural surrounds.

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Amassing such treasures as Staffordshire china and a chair from Westminster Abbey when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, the director of the Irma Stern Museum has created an ode to romance in his cosy Atlantic Seaboard flat.

Christopher Peter has meticulously curated his apartment in Green Point to a froth of fantasy. The result is a sense of the museum, intricate in its outlay, intimate in detail, colourful in execution.

“I wanted to make a distilled jewel box of what I already had, a place of memory and longing, a sort of artistic despair rather like the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul, opened by the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and based on his novel with the same name,” explains Christopher, director of the Irma Stern Museum at the University of Cape Town.

It is an ode to romance. “The energy that filled me as a child sprung from the influence of the glamorous models that I saw in fashion magazines,” he reminisces. “I recall my mother’s ballgown hanging on a wardrobe on a farm in the Eastern Cape in the late evening light with sweet peas outside. She would be going to a dance at the country club, which we always called balls, and I would be painting her sandals gold for the fifth time. That was my duty and I adored it.”

Christopher beams: “I had such a wonderful family. I was at boarding school in King Williams Town, and it was my birthday and my grandmother brought me a reproduction of a Spanish dancer. I had fallen in love with it and she’d had it framed. It was the most scintillating moment of my young life!”

With his Florentine face and etiolated body, Christopher has about him a papal elegance. He is a foot soldier of the unexpected. Today he is wearing a shirt with violets on the cuffs and collar, and persimmon trousers. He employs the same method with the inanimate, mixing plates from Mr Price with valuable Staffordshire china.

The paintwork is a crushed rainbow, and violet is sprinkled throughout – on walls, on chairs, on cushions. There is a pair of cufflinks enamelled with violets and bunches of violets in vases throughout the house.

“It all started when I fell completely for Elisabeth ‘Sisi’ Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. She was this extraordinary woman, beautiful beyond the meaning of the word,” Christopher narrates. Elisabeth, known as the reluctant empress, was a fugue figure, thin as a pin, she wished to be still thinner and was sewn into her leather riding clothes.

“The violet thing is part of her,” he continues. “The tragic madness of the 19th century has something so edgy, so fragile, and yet so glamorous, it draws me. I made a pilgrimage to Sisi’s museum just outside Budapest. I cannot tell you how much I adored it.” It was there that Christopher came across a shop with only violet-inspired products.

Renovating the flat took courage, Christopher confesses: “I was scared of green. I had always lived in red. The colourist Freya Lincoln helped me. The scheme is based on my favourite flowers and the green of the surrounding gardens.”

“Then, I turned the whole flat around, with the help of designer Marco Helfer. Like the famous architect Borromini, he managed perspectives that trick the eye.”

Walking into the apartment is like opening a Christmas cracker. Light dances off ruby-coloured glass, and shines through jade and paper-thin porcelain. Among this tinselly glory are the silver cups won at agriculture shows in the Eastern Cape where he grew up.

Like the cups, every item has a provenance. I was once in a car with Christopher when he suddenly stopped, rushed into a shop in a sweat of excitement and bought an overpriced chair, which had been in Westminster Abbey when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

The apartment is as fabulous as a Fabergé egg with its layers of glossy mineral pigments, yolky yellows, seaweed greens, cyclamen pinks, which curdle with nicotine and violet. There are also glimpses of red, which designer Nicky Haslam calls une touche de rouge.

“There’s no austerity here,” nods Christopher. “Because it is an Edwardian block, the height of the ceilings gives it grandeur. I was looking for lushness, opulence and finery – on a small budget.”

Freya Lincoln 021 671 8327
Marco Helfer 082 471 1571

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Houses reflect their owners. Writer and journalist, Lin Sampson, first fell in love with her house in Cape Town nearly 30 years ago and has barely changed a thing about it. Her key decor element? Books!

I had just returned from Greece in 1980 when I came across this house in a cobbled street in an unfashionable part of town, but it had an old Cape Town charm with a view over the harbour and a tang of salt in the air. It was evening and I remember there were lighted candles in the interior’s flickering penumbra. It released a sense of solitude and remoteness that I had long loved.

Austerity has always attracted me and this house expressed within its shabbiness, hanging shutters and blocked fireplaces, a sense of the past – all the macerations, austerities, meditations and penances that make up the country in which we live.

I had been living in a house in Anafiotika above the Plaka in Athens, in a whitewashed room (all the houses kept a bucket of whitewash on hand, together with a long pole with which to daub at dirty spots in the manner of cleaning a carpet), with a rough cross incised on a lintel over the doorway.

When I was young I longed for plush, perhaps because my parents scorned it. They sought out old cottages with demented walls and leaking roofs in unfashionable areas, always “below the line”. Once we lived in a tower with no bathroom, once in a stable. We seldom had hot water and I still don’t have it.

Decor unheard of

There was never any possible notion of interior decorating and yet, looking back, our houses were so pretty, with just one or two pieces – inherited of course. My mother used to say about others, “She is one of those unfortunate women who didn’t inherit her furniture and had to buy it.”

Sofas and chairs were always slip covered, tied at the back like ball gowns, and one of my jobs was to help get them back into their slips after they had been washed (and shrunk). It’s one of the few skills I still retain (I wonder if there is any money in it?). Decor was unheard of, not even in a dictionary.

I had a friend at school whose mother “redid her lounge” every year. I longed for a redone lounge – although this was a word we were absolutely never allowed to use, so much so that when I became engaged to a man who said “lounge”, I was forced to break it off. And in case you think this was before World War I, my niece, who got engaged last year, admitted to us nervously, “I do have to tell you something about him. He says ‘lounge’.” If she had said he was a paedophile, we would not have been more shocked.

I have always been astounded at how much time South Africans spend on doing up or undoing their houses. They seem to be so obsessed with bathrooms, kitchens and off-street parking that if you offered them Sissinghurst (Vita Sackville-West’s house), they’d ask, “Has it got main en-suite and is there off-street parking?”

When I bought my house, it had the Trappist simplicity sometimes seen in early Scandinavian homes. There was a slab of old pink marble under a fig tree, bare boarded floors and internal shutters. I discovered long after I bought it that it had a superb view over the harbour, but I have always thought views overrated.

The late writer and taste terrorist Bruce Chatwin (who, when I last saw him, was living in one room with a shower in Albany in Piccadilly) once said, “It was one of those awful houses with a view.” To me there is nothing worse than those over-marbled mausoleums on the Atlantic Seaboard with “a view”. What do you think outside is for?

“In the middle of renovating”

In those days I was an interior decorator. I got so sick of people saying, “Oh, this house has got such potential,” that I put a pile of bricks in the hallway and said, “I am just in the middle of renovating”. Ten years later, the pile was still there – and nothing has changed.

I hate:

• scatter cushions
• four glass vases, each containing one flower (usually a protea)
• too much curtain swagged, padded, frilled and puddled on the ground (but I do love short curtains run up by hand)
• travertine (it should all be taken to a crematorium)
• white slippery tiles scattered with what people call Persian carpets (there are about two real Persian carpets in the world, and I can assure you they are not in your house or mine)
• bad pictures (you don’t have to buy South African pictures because you are South African – the world is full of wonderful paintings for quarter the price; the worst is a mediocre picture or, God forbid, a photograph with a little light above it)
• Bourne-Gleemed floors – I love plain scrubbed floors or even cement.

In the end, a house is where you live; it is not a stage, and it takes a lifetime to create. The houses I remember: explorer Wilfred Thesiger’s simple nomadic shelter in the middle of a desert; Bruce Chatwin’s one room with a hot plate in London; and, most beautiful of all, Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy’s 14th-century Islamic house, with its winding wooden staircase and orange trees growing indoors, a peaceful place above the dangerous uproar of Khan el-Kalili souk in Cairo.

These were all places that reflected their owners, not the things they owned.

Do you agree that books are the ultimate furnishings for a room? Click here to do our “What bookshelf are you?” quiz. When you’re done, snap a shelfie in your home and send it to us to stand the chance of winning a prize. 

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