Poetic aesthetic

There's rhyme and reason in the artful assemblage of European antiques and decorative objets in this gently refreshed Sydney home.

- JUDY PASCOE

Referencing Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles and La Posta Vecchia in Italy, the owners of this Sydney eastern suburbs home had inspiration aplenty in their quest to reinvent it.

Having discovered the Spanish mission-style house online during Covid lockdown in 2021 when they were living in Melbourne, they enlisted Sydney-based friend and interior designer Tamsin Johnson to check it out for them. Trusting her completely, they bought the house sight unseen.

"It was a sliding-doors moment," they say, "as we were also looking at houses in Melbourne, but Tamsin got us over the line to opt for the Sydney house." Built in 1932 to a design by architect F. Glynn Gilling, one of several practitioners to introduce 'Old Hollywood' Spanish mission-style architecture to Sydney, the house sits on a leafy street in an elevated enclave of similar properties.

"It had charm," the owner enthuses, "something that was very hard to find in Sydney at the time." The couple were also attracted by the age of the house and its beautiful features, such as arches and multi-paned, wrought-iron windows. "It also involved just the amount of work that we were willing to take on." Tamsin was the natural choice to "bring the house back to life and her design style was perfectly suited to the property" formal, but with her trademark freshness.

The owners wanted their home to "feel like a European holiday" with a soft palette and lots of natural light. They wanted the design to be restrained, classic and timeless, but most importantly they wanted it to remain faithful to its Spanish mission roots, most of which had been covered up and tampered with during a number of bad renovations over the years.