“Every house should have a cabinet of curiosities,” states Otto De Jager, handling an old leather wallet embossed with his initials that belonged to his father and grandfather. Stocked with family photographs, scented candles and old ribbon, the cabinet – which resides in a Victorian duplex De Jager spends one week a month in – is a trophy case of memorabilia, but also a place to display everything that he wants to keep safe, out of the way and dust-free.
“The whole idea was just to not live in hotels constantly,” he remembers, describing the part-investment, part-lifestyle property purchase, he made 13 years ago – after midnight, while drunk on an evening out with friends. “I didn’t even have a look at how many bedrooms the house had.”
De Jager then embarked on what he describes as a “helluva renovation.” The 103-year-old cottage was stripped, walls were knocked down and windows were installed for better views. “It had over a hundred years of paint on it….The bathrooms were a mess. It was a dump, but a good dump.”
The “dump” is now white, light and bright, with soaring ceilings and back-to-back original fireplaces (with their Victorian tiles). The kitchen is clad in stainless steel juxtaposed with old, bull-nosed columns, marble countertops and reading lights on the wall. “A lot of what we did is to bring a Victorian into a modern era. It’s about throwing things together and bringing it into the new, but the integrity had to remain.”
“There are no modern appliances; there are no microwaves, dishwashers, TVs – and there’s a very good reason for that,” he explains. “I wanted the upgrades to reflect a certain era. We can listen to music, we can read. Let’s get to bed early, cook together, bake together, have tea together. It’s a place of nostalgia and calming down and spending time with people.”
The strategic quiet is aided by the religious paraphernalia all over, which De Jager says was completely unintentional, attributing it to a phase he “must have been going through.”
There are Catholic statues, Christian crosses, the Star of David on a lot of his silverware and a Hindu granite marble slab in the entranceway. And the theme extends to the white dove in the oversize photograph on the living room wall and the biblical olive trees in the courtyard next to the kitchen.
“The fact that a lot here is collected is who I am. I love collecting beauty – nothing in particular. It’s not about being planned. It’s about having an eye and realizing that something will work.”
Photography by Warren Heath.
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