{"id":12953,"date":"2021-12-19T14:21:36","date_gmt":"2021-12-19T22:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/?p=12953"},"modified":"2023-01-11T12:54:45","modified_gmt":"2023-01-11T20:54:45","slug":"black-magic-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/black-magic-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Magic Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In the hands of this Cape Town creative, Christmas decorating has been given an intriguing twist defined by Gothic influences, ornate flourishes, and foraged wild botanicals.<\/h5>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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n walking through Rupert Smith\u2019s extraordinary and beautiful inner-city Cape Town loft, it\u2019s easy to appreciate why he is in constant demand in South Africa and abroad for his work in visual merchandising, installations, and high-end media events. As well as Rupert\u2019s consulting work in the retail, fashion, creative, and advertising industries, he is a lecturer at VM Central, the design consultancy and training studio that he co-founded with long-time collaborator Sanet Coetzee. And then there is his new shop, CENTRAL; the successor to O.live, his much-loved concept store that was the first to offer the wunderkammer aesthetic to eager, local decoristas. Just like its predecessor, CENTRAL has become a magnet for the city\u2019s magpies, design lovers, and seekers of one-off treasures for the home.<\/p>\n\t<\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Rupert\u2019s own home is a double-volume industrial space with million-dollar views of Table Mountain and a spellbinding interior that is \u201ca curation of all the gems that I have found on my life\u2019s journey, things that have meaning to me.\u201d It is in this urban, stripped-back setting that Rupert has foregone the conventional Christmas sentimentalities and instead conjured up a darker, more dramatic vision that marries the Gothic elements he loves with opulent accents and lashings of foraged botanicals\u2014all of which are connected by a colour palette inspired by the paintings of the Dutch Old Masters. It\u2019s a kind of magic.<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Rupert says, \u201cI seem to have come full circle with my home. I used to live in this same building [that was previously offices] but in a much smaller loft. My next home after that was an old heritage cottage. When this space became available and I had a look, I fell back in love with the openness of an industrial building, the high-volumes, and warehouse fittings. And there was this amazing view of the mountain. So here I am back in the heart of the city.\"<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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In describing his design aesthetic, he comments, \u201cFor my interiors, I prefer a canvas of black and white which I then Iayer with texture, plants, and objects that reflect my love for vintage and the unusual.\u201d He also expressed a love of entertaining and having friends over. \u201cNormally, it is very relaxed and low-key, but I do like to make a bit of an effort for special occasions like birthdays, Christmas and New Year,\u201d he adds.<\/span><\/p>

When asked about his tips for entertaining, he said, \u201cSetting an interesting table is something I really like spending time on. A beautiful table can make a get-together so much more memorable. Colour and textures are very important to me when putting together a table. And of course, greenery, beautiful ceramics, and glassware complete the setting.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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TrooRa Magazine | December 2021\n
Text<\/strong> Mandy Allen\/Bureaux\n
Styling<\/strong> Shelley Street\/Bureaux\n
Photo Credit<\/strong> Warren Heath\/Bureaux\n\n<\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Matt textures, layered tablescapes, and whispers of earthy colour provided by nature make for a serene Christmas setting in Algria Ferreira-Watling\u2019s Cape Town home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":363,"featured_media":12976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culinary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/363"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troora.com\/team\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}