GROUP THERAPY For 40 years, Rodney de Soos was a furniture restorer and retailer in Sydney’s Woollahra. Copeland & de Soos
in Queen Street was renowned for the highly curated interior displays where furniture and objects, sourced in different eras from
around the globe, found a common language. This skill for arrangement now takes full flight in Rodney’s home on the NSW South
Coast (above), where his facility for grouping objects through finding threads of connection enables disparate pieces to come together.
Deconstructing the image shows how he has massed the timber objects of differing scale and shape, how the artworks are all
monochromatic, alongside the fabric on the chair, and how the hit of orange on the sideboard is picked up in the hanging fabric.
Take away: Grouping objects of similar materiality is easier on the eye.BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP There are few architects in these books, for the simple reason that they often favour the form
of a building over its contents. Melbourne architect John Wardle is not of that mindset and is a bowerbird collector of all sorts of
things, from cameras to bits of agricultural machinery. This image of the kitchen in the Shearer’s Quarters on Tasmania’s Bruny
Island (opposite) illustrates the way in which eBay finds, vintage tables and commissioned ceramic pieces sit together. There is
inventiveness both in the structure of the house and in the way objects are displayed, with areas of creative clutter balanced with
those of considered calm. Arrangements of shells and beach-found detritus are placed as though in a museum and, as John
acknowledges, his finds have little to do with monetary value and everything to do with authenticity. “It is all about counterpoints,
relationships between objects and the dynamism that results,” he says.
Take away: Try to see beauty in the under-appreciated.46 / Inside Out