By
margaretta wa Gacheru (posted March 24, 2017)
Twenty years
ago, Dana Seidenberg was looking for a place to live when a friend brought her
to an overgrown garden on Loresho Ridge. Nestled deep inside the garden (which
hadn’t been tamed for many months) he introduced her to an old dilapidated
stone house that had been deserted and apparently left to rot.
To her the
house looked like a ‘shipwreck’ but to her friend, Kimani Gacheru, the place
was more like a ‘tabla rasa’ that could be rehabbed and designed according to
her needs, dreams and specifications.
Plus, as he
was a part-time furniture maker as well as a quantity surveyor, Kimani promised
to help her make the place a home uniquely her own.
Dana
couldn’t resist. So over the next 20 years she not only rehabbed the house with
Kimani’s help. She filled it with all her favorite things, starting with her
books, all of which are carefully shelved and found in practically every room
of her two-story house.
Lined up
encyclopedically in polished wooden bookcases, most of which were made by Kimani,
her books are just one of the many items that make her home uniquely her own.
But Kimani’s
contribution to the house, besides the beautiful rehabbing of both the floors
and the vaulted ceilings in solid wood, is an array of home furnishings made
from wooden tree stumps and roots. They include a slew of sturdy dark wooden
tables and chairs which add an earthy elegance to both the interiors as well as
the ground floor veranda.
It’s in that
veranda, which leads into the front hall and the large ‘dystopic’ painting by
the late Omosh Kindeh, that one gets the first hint of Dana’s affinity for
organic art. For Kimani isn’t the only artist whose works Dana treasures.
She’s got a
special affinity for wood sculptures by Elijah Ogira and Irene Wanjiru, which
one will find not only on Dana’s front patio but literally all over the house.
She’s also
got one room full of indigenous musical instruments which she inherited from
her late husband, Solomon…..
But
Solomon’s not the only one from whom Dana’s inherited a slew of lovely things.
Both her grandmothers left her beautiful antiques which she discretely
displays, such as the sterling silver teapot and cutlery which come out for
special guests.
Otherwise,
Dana takes pride in having designed most of her sofas and bedroom sets in sleek
and simple styles, assembled to her taste by carpenters in Dagoretti. For
upholstery she’s used beautiful hand-woven textiles, most of which come from
West Africa, such as mud cloth from Mali. The fabrics are stitched locally and
shaped into cushions which enhance the décor of every upstairs bedroom and
cover the wicker sofas as well.
Dana admits
she’s loved shopping for home furnishings which are hand-made, be they baskets,
textiles, ceramic tea sets, sisal carpets or hand-carved sculptures by Ogira
and Wanjiru.
‘Having
grown up in the West [the US] where most home furnishings are machine-made, I
love the opportunity I’ve had to acquire items made by hand,” she says.
The one room
where machines are conspicuous as well as utilitarian is Dana’s kitchen. That’s
where she’s got the most modern gas stove and double-doored fridge as well as
an electric blender that she uses every day to make fresh juices which are part
of her daily health and fitness regime.
So while her
home may not win awards for being ‘modern’ or Afro-chic, it’s a place that
reflects the multiple worlds that Dana has occupied over the years. It’s also
the space that her friend Kimani foresaw would be a home uniquely her own.
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