H&L - Luxury Home Anna T som4

28 | April - May 2014 | Home & Living EA

Luxury Home

Designer Anna Trzebinski understands that in making a life full of colour

and creativity, there’s no separation between person and place, home and

heart. By Susan O'Meara. Pictures by Deepak Sankreacha

Fashioning a home for family

O

Home & Living EA | April - May 2014 | 29

Luxury Home

On first approach, the tongue-and-groove cabin with its arched windows could be an old-fashioned school room or village library, settled neatly in a dreamy field of grass and singular trees. On closer inspection, however, it is anything but. This home belongs to Anna Trzebinski, and it houses the sensual journey of a life well-lived.

Soft brown hair falls to her waist, her blue eyes are keen and oft times mischievous. She has high, strong cheekbones, a manner that is fluid and an electric, curious mind. Since 1993, Anna has lived here on the outskirts of Langata/Hardy where she and her late husband, Antonio “Tonio” Trzebinski, built their dream home.

Person and personality coalesce as one steps off the mazera pathway, across the wrap-around deck and into the main living room, full of books and fossils and sculptures and art and stones and rich, rich materials. Especially, most prominently, wood. Wood that glows, adding warmth like no other element.

In the early 1990s, Anna was at English Point Harbour on the Kenyan coast when a storm rose up, smashing a dhow onto the reef. The water immediately turned brown from the tea in its hold; the ship’s wooden flesh and bones scattered in the ocean, planks rising and falling on the darkening sea.

Tonio had seen how old railway ties were being recovered in South Africa, and so, husband and wife immediately set about gathering the remnants of the fractured boat for their domain-in-the-making. “We hadn’t much money then, so this wood represented a real gift,” Anna elaborates. “Tonio knew that we could make furniture, walls, bookshelves, everything to give our house a different dimension and warmth.”

Removing the rot from water, wind, sand and salt by hand, the young couple began to wax their treasure of ancient Arabic hardwoods, using mosquito netting for the final polish. With surfaces as smooth as satin, each and every piece the Trzebinskis had collected was set to purpose, including using the mast for the centerpiece dining table.

CLOCKWISE: Anna Trzebinski. The warm and well-lit lounge. Side-length view of the living area. Bronze sculpture by Anna's son, Stas


CLOCKWISE: The wrap-a-round verandah with suede-covered lounges. The bespoke picnic table with built-in benches. The outdoor kitchen with a cobalt-blue, ruffled vase and a basket of lettuce. Anna's daughter Lana with the family's Yorkshire Terrier, Lily

Born in Germany, Anna grew up off Ndege Road in Karen, the daughter of Dodo Cunningham-Reid, who ran a very grand Kenyan mansion. “It was full,” Anna recalls,“with uniformed staff in white gloves. My mother’s sensibility was very aesthetic, very formal. Even the sheets were ironed – while they were on the bed.” Still, Anna and her younger brother “ran riot” during their African childhood. “My favourite memory of that time is of falling asleep, my head in one ayah’s lap, my feet in the other’s as she plucked thorns from my bare feet.”

When the time came to make their first real home together, Anna and Tonio lucked out. They had been renting on Bogani Road with son Stas

Luxury Home

(now 22) and were expecting Lana (now 21). “We were very ready to settle down and happened to stumble upon this heavily-forested, two-and-a-half acre plot. We slept in a tent under the trees and stars that first night.”

The Trzebinskis went about this new adventure with their typical gusto, designing everything from the ground up – and with a shared artistic perspective. “Our only mandate was that we wouldn’t cut down any trees. Not a one.” (In fact, a live tree trunk still springs up through the large verandah.) Three weeks into breaking ground, their contractor took a hike; Anna and her husband found themselves with very little money and a long stretch of work

looming ahead. Tonio seized the day. Within eight months, he had built their “honeymoon” hideaway himself. Instead of windows, he favoured French doors all the way around the house for a more light-filled exhibition of his paintings, large, wall-sized works that add vibrant splashes to the living room.

Today, the three-storey house is as warm as the family who has lived and loved in it for 20 years. A massive fireplace, room enough for three people to sit in and play cards, takes centre stage downstairs. It is harvested from the legendary dhow that smashed upon the rocks in Mombasa, as is nearly every other piece of wood used for the coffee tables, sofas, bookshelves, even frames for the beds upstairs.

Lilies festoon the living area, shocking fuschia, pink and white,


CLOCKWISE: Lillies in standing vaseware adorning one of the dhow coffee tables. The magnificent dining table. A well-crafted ornamental metal snake.

and buttery cream, in etched crystal, balloon-style and horn vases. An entire wall of bookcases speaks volumes, including an array of diversely-configured African headrests. Ancient tribal shields, bearing the scars of battle, hang with pride along the back wall.

Underneath the glass in the side tables lie collections of salt-washed seashells, and the bones of small animals and insects from Trzebinski travels and Anna’s walking safaris. Lit candles are plentiful, sitting pretty in totem-like ceramic pots, silver holders and delicate flutes. An immense, low-hanging chandelier with jade leaves augments the mystical feel. A hand-carved wooden crocodile warms his tummy at the foot of the fire.

Sensual colours and textures abound. Bright, brushed cotton in marigold drapes the dining chairs. Three oversized sofas in dusky butterscotch velour form a ‘U’; you can nestle right in against their large stone-coloured pillows. Across one settee rests an immense, otherworldly throw, big enough to wrap an entire family in. Comprised of fur panels in caramel, charcoal, black, white and silver, you can’t help but wonder if it is stitched together from fantastical Arctic foxes.

Up the narrow staircase are the children’s bedrooms and Anna’s master suite. It is a royal affair of all different hues of purple – a sumptuous violet throw across the bed at the foot of which is a love seat in crushed dark grape velour; walls painted in the palest of lilacs; umber drapes in a heavy lace with dusky rose valances in velvet. Two massive photographic portraits of orchids by American Alexandra Penney adorn an entire wall.

A kind of vanity has been created from stacked safari valises, bookended by antique riding boots. In evidence: a collection of Anna’s sentimental journeys, from Buddha statues you can cup in the small of your hand and coral-coloured soapstone figurines of wildlife, to a miniature sandollar, no bigger than a stamp, and heart-

Luxury Home

shaped stones. An art deco, crystal-beaded lamp with a black linen shade lights the night.

The bathroom is an invitation to escape and luxuriate. Plain mazera stone floors have been sanded over and over again, giving off a steady sheen of the palest earthen hues: green, brown, terracotta, pink, and gold. “By removing the top layer instead of just polishing,” Anna reveals, “you see the life that this stone has led – an oil spill here, a fossil insect there.”

With keepsakes such as giant conch and oyster shells decorating its ledges, the roomy bathtub nestles into a wrap of cedar arms. This reddish wood is polished to a high shine and forms the cabinets, as well as the frame of the saloon-style shower doors. A mosaic of mini-seashells frames a heart-shaped mirror. Archway windows and glass shelving house colourful, enamel-lined coconut shell halves and bottles of perfume. Above the double sinks, a Kitengela-like installation of muted glass tones and fluted, flower-shaped lights hugs the bathroom mirror.

Back downstairs, French doors sweep out onto the verandah. It almost feels as if there are no walls

between the heart of the house and the great outdoors. In fact, Anna has accentuated this sensation by running the plank flooring from the lounge right into the verandah, creating a strong sensation of flow.

Here, safari lanterns dangle

on wrought-iron hangers, anchored in cross-sections of tree trunks. Lounge chairs, big enough for two, in evergreen and chocolate suede, beckon. Supersized terracotta pots filled with leafy succulents and pigmy palms reside in one corner. In the other, a four-square table with built-

in benches, also made of dhow and streaked with blonde, chocolate, mahogany, charcoal colours, sits beneath a canvas marquee with let-down flaps for eating and visiting in every kind of weather.

The vista from here across the garden is simple and renewing, a broad spread of lawn, peppered with indigenous trees. “Although Tonio and I never really agreed on what it should be. He favoured its dense forest, feeling properly in the bush, while that made me somewhat claustrophobic,” Anna sighs. “I wanted to let the light in, so I’ve spent the past couple of years grooming it, pouring my love into the plot,” she says.

Anna adds, “We always wanted an outdoor kitchen,” leading the way to a separate wooden cottage, trimmed with forest green metal cut-outs along

I love this living room at night. It

comes alive at night, because it

was built by a man who loved people

and loved to party. And I can tell you it

reciprocates that


Luxury Home

the roof. While sparsely decked out in a clean, white terrazzo, it too makes a statement. A massive bowl, as long as an arm, overflows with fruit. A goldfish darts across its super-sized globe of glass. Tall, red thermoses flower in chintz-like roses. Two slim, ebony, charcoal-fired vases from Bali sleep on a windowsill. A giant kuku (chicken), carved from a single piece of wood in the Congo, turns out to be a bread box.

Where does this design for living come from? In a spacious studio on a plot that hums with industry, Anna has honed a trademark style of clothing – lush pashmina shawls, trimmed with native African peacock,

I collect headrests, bones, stone hearts. There’s a Native American saying

that if you give someone a heart of stone, their heart

will be yours forever

guinea fowl and ostrich features, rich suede jackets and fitted coats with cowhorn buttons and buckles, hand-beaded sandals, dark mink ponchos, unstructured bags of exotic skins and leathers. Her “Kenya couture” has expanded over the years to include hard and soft furnishings, accessories, works of art and more.

“It all sort of started as an accident, a bit of mille feuille with my decorating my own shawls with feathers, beads and tokens. Then suddenly I realised I was building a brand and had a fully-baked cake. I’m much more confident now in my vision from a design point of view. I know exactly what I like and

don’t like, and it’s heaven,” says Anna.

Now married to Loyapan Lemarti, a member of the Samburu tribe with whom she has second daughter, Tacha (6), Anna hopes most of all that family and guests who come and go from this homestead feel “that they’re in a loving, very warm environment. And that they are immersed in nature.” Concludes her tall, dark sculptor of a son, Stas, who lives in Cape Town: “What I got most from growing up at our family place is an appreciation for the natural world from an early age. Warthogs in the garden, Dad’s love of fishing, rescuing baby monkeys and parrots. We lived in harmony with all of that.” H&L

CLOCKWISE: Anna's ensuite bathroom. One is reminded of an oceanside spa with the collection of huge conch and oyster shells on the bathtub ledges. Anna favours an eclectic little parfumerie.


Luxury Home

My favourite room… used to be my bedroom. But it’s the garden I’m drawn to most now. I love it. I now want to live in it, pull out a giant, antique Balinese bed with a soft mattress, lots of pillows and dive in.

My most essential décor element…the easiest way to accessorise an interior is with flowers and candles and a roaring fire.

My favourite thing to wear… is Ghost anything. And a great vintage Etro coat.

My greatest high… is hearing my children laugh.

My biggest dream…is to open the most unbelievably successful store

on Madison Avenue, one that will turn heads all over the world.

My most memorable party… was long ago. An Arabian Nights’ farewell at ours for the German ambassador with acrobats and dancers and Rolf Schmid turning lambs on the spit and music and candles everywhere. And breakfast, thank God, because nobody bloody left!

My favourite comfort food… is mashed potatoes.

My motto is… never cut corners in any way. Do the absolute best with the most attention to detail and use the best materials. And I’m obsessed with everything (being) handmade.

ANNA’S LIVING TRUTHSAnna's three children. From left to right, Tacha Lemarti (6), Stas Trzebinski (22), Lana Trzebinski

Purple - its vitality and vividness speaks to Anna like no other colour. And her sumptuous bedroom couldn't be greater proof of that.

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H&L - Luxury Home Anna T som4