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Aug-Sep15
SOUTHSIDE SHOWCASE
of woodlands in the book. Bizarrely, he
said it was part of his MA studies!”
Into
The Woods
is a dreamy, mysterious
landscape inmint green, with – of course
– a lantern in the foreground. Hilary has
also created her own artworks; in the
dining room there’s a framed collection
of Penguin book jackets – but only in
shades of orange and blue! “I threw away
the greens and reds,” laughs Hilary. “It
was a great way to fill the space, we had
a lot of funmaking it, and you end up with
unintentional stories, if you read the titles
from left to right!”
Specially angled spotlights in the
ceiling individually illuminate each of
the artworks; Hilary retrained in lighting
design after working in an architecture
practice for a couple of years. “At the
most fundamental level, good lighting
is knowing where to place a spotlight,
understanding how far out in the ceiling
you need to go, to successfully light a
picture” she explains. “Then it’s about
creating layers of light and atmosphere
so you create a generous, comfortable
feeling in a room, with light that, ultimately,
flatters the objects and the inhabitants!”
There are a number of elegant
birdcage lanterns sourced from Inside
and Tequila Kola around the apartment,
but when Hilary is hosting dinner
parties in the dining room or outside
on her sublime terrace, the majority
of light comes from old-fashioned oil
lamps. “There’s a lovely lady who runs
a company called Zest of Asia; she’s a
dealer who hosts pop-ups or sales at
her home, and I started buying oil lamps
from her,” says Hilary. “Then I started
to import them myself, for a couple of
minor lighting projects I’ve done so far.”
Hilary adds to the glow on the terrace
created by the oil lamps with a series
of textured glass hurricane lamps,
placed high on a window ledge in the
en-suite bathroom, which backs onto
the terrace. “When we’re eating outside
I put candles in there, and they flicker
atmospherically,” she says. The terrace
has an overwhelmingly colonial feel,
with large French windows leading into
the apartment, and a view to die for,
onto lush, landscaped tropical gardens
and beyond, Stanley Main Beach. The
windows aren’t the original frames, but
much of the block and garden dates
back to its construction in 1957, when
the apartments were built to create
income for the owners of the grand
mansion that stood at the top of the
imposing stone staircase in the garden.
The mansion is long gone, naturally,
replaced by a modern apartment block.
However, Hilary recently had a visit
from a former tenant, an old lady who
grew up in the block and now lives in
Canada. “She told me every family in
the block had a Western father and
a Chinese mother, and were a mix of
journalists and writers and creative
people. Stanley Beach Road was a
host of private bungalows with beautiful
tropical gardens, and the beach was
practically private; if anyone walked on
it the children didn’t recognise, they’d
run back and tell their mother! She said
she was still friends with the children she
played with in the garden all those years
ago, and she sent me old photographs
of them sitting with their amahs!”