Braelin, located adjacent to Sydney’s celebrated Centennial Park, is home to Dr Gene Sherman AM and her husband Brian Sherman AM. It has gravitas and architectural pedigree – designed and built in 1918 for Sir Allen Taylor, by architect Donald Thomas Esplin, a skilled and enthusiastic Arts and Crafts practitioner.
A century later, the resulting renovations are a collaboration between Gene Sherman and multi-disciplinary creative Don Cameron. It has become an exemplar of how to weave past and present, retain what is significant and inject contemporary liveability and a charge of art and curated furniture pieces as befits Braelin’s owners.
Produced in partnership with
Gene was, in many ways, the perfect client for Don. She is a philanthropist, academic and an expert on art, fashion and architecture, driving cultural programmes to promote these interests through the Sherman Centre for Culture and Ideas (SCCI). Like all good curators, Gene balanced shaping the brief with trust and curiosity, and clear positions of alignment were articulated from the outset. “Gene and I confessed early on that form would always triumph over function when selecting furnishings for Braelin,” Don says. “Working with someone who had spent a lifetime observing and appreciating the innate beauty of an object before giving it a function… created a soulmate in Gene.”
One directive was that
The context for the furniture and lighting plays an equally important role. A library of books gathered over a lifetime fills a series of
The kitchen and dining space is a place for large gatherings with its link to the exterior space – the pool and walled garden – and is dominated by large-scale photographic prints such as Zhang Huan’s Family Tree (2000) alongside the angular sculptural presence of the de Cotiis table. Hence, the kitchen island bench was required to present a simple monumentality in the name of balance.
The
Braelin has become a container for all that existed and has been acquired – art, books, textiles, objects, lighting and furniture – and now that it has been cohesively orchestrated, it acts as a mirror to the passions and intellect of its owners.
The post