Boplaas, Wellington

For the love of cooking

When a client came to visit Mr Chandler’s studio to ask if he could paint a splashback for her farm kitchen, MC himself had been a first-time home-owner for a few months. In his excitement, Mr Chandler had spent several weeks with architects pouring over the plans, assembling exhaustive Pinterest boards & day-dreaming about what his own future kitchen should look like. After much deliberation, he came to envision enamel-painted walls, stained marble counters, old wooden chairs & floors that appeared as if they had been worn down over centuries of scrubbing away kitchen spills.

Restrained & not too precious, it seemed to be a fitting blank canvas to the shared meals that would be conjured up inside. The kitchen is a busy place where things can feel overwhelming rather suddenly & often, without warning. And so, functionality paired with little ornamentation is imperative to cool things down when the kitchen heats up. In Mr Chandler’s dream kitchen, the splashback would be tiled – of course. For this farm kitchen, MC wanted simple, cream-glazed tiles, each slightly irregular & wonky, alluding to their intimate, handmade nature. Mrs C – his darling patron – took the modest yet elegant design MC would have chosen for himself & added narrative, romance & a pinch of whimsy to it; ingredients that bring flavour – not just to dishes – but to moments in life, too.

The farm has a glorious vegetable garden; Mrs C wanted to bring these nutritious ingredients from the garden indoors in the form of their cobalt blue, ever-fresh versions. Each agricultural element that MC painted can be found in the walled vegetable garden outside: cabbages, carrots, herbs & eggs! An abundant thank you to Henrique Wilding for supplying these professional photographs. The house is available to rent with Perfect Hideaways.