Is chintz on its way back in? Sibella Court thinks so
As top interior designer Sibella Court’s crafted her coastal home from scratch, childhood memories of visiting her grandparents’ house came flooding back, influencing her modern take on chintz.
Sibella Court can’t help but notice beauty everywhere.
“I’m very easily distracted by shiny, pretty things,” she says laughing.
“Even this morning, I was waiting for an Uber in the city where a leaf, just slightly pink, had fallen from a vine, and I popped it between my magazine to take home.”
For the product and interior designer, nature has always been an inspiration, and having moved from inner Sydney to Bundeena, a village on the outskirts of southern Sydney, its influence is even more profound.
Her captivating circa-1920s cottage, which she shares with her husband Ben Harper and their daughter Silver, eight, sees her constantly drawing from the location’s wild coastline and Royal National Park. Colours, shapes, textures and even scents are woven into her work, whether that’s her own paints, wallpapers, interior products or natural fragrances, the spaces she styles, or the shop and studio she captains, The Society inc.
Though Sydney born and bred, Court hadn’t spent a lot of time in Bundeena before her move there two years ago. It was only while visiting a friend in the area that she found she didn’t want to leave and casually kept an eye on the property market. It was that same friend who called her one day to say she’d spotted a house she might like.
“That was a Friday and it was open on Saturday,” remembers Court, who with her husband – who also shared her desire to be quite hands-on with the build – decided then and there to buy.
“It was a wooden house that has been added to over time by other home-build enthusiasts,” Court explains of the home’s appeal.
“You can take away from it pretty easily and then put it back together, it’s just one minute from one beach and 30 seconds to another beach and there was something quite nostalgic about it as well. It had all the idiosyncrasies that I really like in houses, like the crazy stained windows, and just enough of the character that enchanted and charmed me.”
Renovations followed, with all surfaces stripped back.
“We sanded every floor, lined every wall and painted or wallpapered, put seagrass mats in and some new walls and a new bathroom,” says Court.
The three-bedroom, two-storey cottage with sea views, a generous garden, original shed and a mix of light and dark spaces – “there’s this lovely nuance and philosophy of embracing shadow, the dark with the light’’ – has retained the quirky proportions Court loves.
“There are lovely bigger spaces for the communal areas where you can come together, but plenty of nooks as well, nooks everywhere!” she says.
Filled with colour and curios, Court’s home reflects her inimitable style, one shaped by her bowerbird inclinations, love of history, which she studied at university, unbridled creativity and instinct for storytelling. Deep meditative blue, soothing green, pinks and earthy hues gloriously combine.
Among it all are objects found in nature or collected from her extensive travels as well as surplus from her studio.
“My house is a bit of a prototype and all the samples go down there and get tested,” she says. The front blue room, for instance, features remnants from a National Gallery of Victoria exhibition where she had handpainted and hand-stitched walls.
“I would say 99.9 per cent of everything I have around me has some point in my history – of who I was with, where I was and what I was doing,” reflects Court. “I think objects hold so much information.”
In her role as interior ambassador for Sydney’s Billy Blue College of Design the richness of history is something she shares with students.
“It’s been a treat to pass on my passion for looking into the past for design cues to the students,” says Court, who has also run a colour workshop in the Royal National Park for the school and offers students mentoring and internships through The Society inc. Souvenirs and pieces with a past in her own home are also often conversation-starters among the guests the family welcomes to their laid-back abode.
Court loves to cook, friends are encouraged to stay over and it’s very much an open-door, no-fuss policy.
“I’m the one walking sand through the house,” she confesses with a chuckle.
While professionally the designer approaches every project with meticulous planning and storyboarding, her own home took shape more organically and was influenced by childhood memories of visiting her grandparents’ house in the Great Lakes region of New South Wales where she watched old movies, pressed flowers, and accompanied her artist grandmother fishing.
“Her living room was chintz on chintz on chintz,” she recalls fondly.
“It was this incredible personal space that was a portrait of her. So my thoughts were those sorts of memories – not quite chintz but my newer version of my own chintz, which I’ve dropped into my house.”
This article appears in the April issue of Vogue Australia, on sale now
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