India Hicks: Island Style

Hibiscus Hill became my life raft as I adjusted to island life.

Pootling through our stone gates, and on up our winding driveway, you will find our home at the top of a

rise, overlooking town, sitting proudly amongst a jungle of palm trees. The bay to the west, the ocean to the east. The sound of the waves, rhythmically breaking on the three mile pink sand beach, at the bottom of the garden.

Hibiscus Hill came fully furnished, salmon chintz cushions on shell shaped sofas, immaculate heavy

glassed dining table, alarming ornate chandelier, thick bedroom carpets (confusing for a house in the tropics) and trinkets in every corner. We hardly knew where to begin. And we had no money to do it with.

What we did know was that we wanted our home to feel more 1850 than 1950. So we began by removing

In place of the tiles we laid unusually large planks of fir that reached a full sixteen feet long. We stained

the white tiled floor, at which point the inherited housekeeper left, disgusted.

them a dark shade of oak but over the years traffic, from family and friends, and the relentless blaze of a Bahamian sun, has given them a warmer, lighter look. As paint was readily available (unlike toothpaste or face

cream) we decided to experiment. The sitting room and dinning rooms went from a Palm Beach white to

Mediterranean rust, except once we lived with that for a few weeks we realized we were mad. We were living in the tropics not the Cote d’ Azure. So rust was out, replaced with the palest gray. David now claims all these changes came about because I was pregnant and you should never leave a pregnant woman alone with Pantone paint chips. Unfortunately for him I became pregnant a further three times. Our walls have suffered.

Of course the entrance of a house, is really just about that, making an entrance. Unfortunately the first

thing you see in our house is a rather nasty wooden console, that we acquired with the house. We couldn’t afford to change this out and painted it white, hoping for the best. Now, years later, with too many children

and demands of daily life the table still remains there. As hideous as ever. We all know you should live in a house for a while before making design decisions but this is perhaps taking it too far.

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ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfa-

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 56

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 57

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I N H E R I TA N C E

I have inherited a few bits here and there for which I am very grateful. My great grandfather’s giltwood console table for instance, circa 1730, with a serpentine Portor marble top, above a pierced patera and foliate

carved frieze, on ogee legs, with satyr mask headers and pied de biche, with shell carved stretcher. (And yes, I am as lost as you are with that description.) On top of which it’s quite an intimidating piece of furni-

ture that I can never really find the right location for and to make matters more complicated, I can’t ever sell

it because my mother would kill me.

One of the other thingsa I have inherited is an obsessive desire for collecting, organizing, and tablescap-

ing. Tablescape. My father invented this term, or so he claimed. My brother Ashley would know for sure. Ash-

ley? No matter if he did or did not, he was the master at it. Since I can remember I have lived in rooms whose surfaces are filled with collections of objects. And as my father illustrated these can be ancient or barely even

antique, or in our case inexpensive mixed with very inexpensive, simply organized by color and characteris-

tic David Hicks precision.

Recently I was sent in the post a House Beautiful magazine dated 1967. Starring on the cover was a table

from my mother’s boudoir, captioned “David Hicks’s tablescape, Oxfordshire.” On the table were a few objects

perfectly positioned, which over the years had been added to, or slightly rearranged. Never by my mother whose room it was, but always by my father. Studying the magazine cover so many years later, memories of that nearly forgotten world came back, a world of butlers and chauffeurs and children who were rarely seen

and certainly never heard. My eye caught one of the opaque smoky green glass boxes, displayed on that table

top and I remembered it was where my mother kept the Good Boy Choc Drops she would feed her miniature

dachshund at teatime. I also remembered that I would steal into that room and furtively open the box and eat

the doggie chocolate drops myself. Dear God, I hope Domino is not eating Banger’s treats.

When I bought my first apartment in London, my father of course had a heavy hand in guiding its decora-

tion. A tented bed, in David Hicks fabric, complete with matching bed cover, cushions and vanity chair. The sit-

© 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 71

ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfather’s travel clock that no longer works but looks handsome in the mix. An empty jam jar with a single rose and a pretty bottle of fragrance now completes the scene.

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Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 77

first, which conflicts with general opinion. A full breakfast follows, always in stages,: fresh orange juice, eggs

and bacon, toasted English muffin, in a toast rack, other wise it goes soft, obviously, and enjoyed with honey,

brought out from England.

My mother has spent seventeen Christmases with us. Seventeen very traditional English Christmases

spent under swaying palm trees. Ten of which have been cooked by Top Banana, all of which have included Crackers from Fortnum & Mason and a Christmas pudding from Tesco (apparently the Queen buys her there).

We have also hosted many a Halloween party, for our small community school, Each year becoming more

ghoulish in our ideas, until one time a nutty island friend broke down the garden gate, dressed improbably in a yellow oil skin and a Silence Of The Lambs mask and ran around the garden swinging a working chain saw.

Most of the children left in tears. After that we dialed back the ideas a little.

More successfully we invite all of the school to our yearly Easter egg hunt. We serve the parents cold

Pimm’s, with fresh cucumber and mint, as the children dash about, crazed on chocolate and out of their minds in excitement that the Hibiscus Hill Easter bunny bounced all over the garden again.

We have invented every sort of themed birthday party possible, from camouflaged army to pink marsh-

mallows and one year for our fourth son’s 8th birthday, exhausted of ideas, a food fight was suddenly suggest-

ed, and promptly arranged. Down to the beach we went, paper plates piled high with wet spaghetti, whipped

cream and vats of jelly. The children lined up in order of size, someone blew a whistle and all hell broke loose.

The air became filled with food being flung. Children ran in delighted terror as even parents began to join in,

tossing and smearing their way through the crowd of bodies, after which we all washed off in the cool tur-

quoise ocean. Now please don’t get all PC on me about this, my children are very aware that throwing food around is not acceptable and that others in different parts of the world, are not fortunate enough to have food at all. This was a one off occasion, on a sunny birthday afternoon.

As the children grow up so do our ideas. For one of the teenage boys we celebrated with a considerable

fire pit, burrowed out by the waters edge, around which we sat as the sun set, toasting marshmallows. We lit

© 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 90

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ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfather’s travel clock that no longer works but looks handsome in the mix. An empty jam jar with a single rose and a pretty bottle of fragrance now completes the scene.

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 106

ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfather’s travel clock that no longer works but looks handsome in the mix. An empty jam jar with a single rose and a pretty bottle of fragrance now completes the scene.

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 107

ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfather’s travel clock that no longer works but looks handsome in the mix. An empty jam jar with a single rose and a pretty bottle of fragrance now completes the scene.

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 126

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 127

ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfa-

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 156

ABOVE: inexpensive frames of a similar nature, add in some black and white photos and put the three frames together, next to them maybe place a leather box from Pot-

tery Barn on top of which you could add a lump of coral, OPPOSITE: beside which you might place the bone handled hairbrushes from your childhood and your grandfa-

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 157

Š 2014 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved 162

STU FF

Stuff. Collections of it. How did we manage to accumulate so much? Hibiscus Hill is brimming. Treasured artwork, children’s pottery, travel tokens, artifacts gathered over the years. Every corner bears evidence of our fascination with stuff: always in a constant state of movement, and endlessly reimagined.

My father believed one mediocre object on its own becomes something of interest when joined by

others, to form a collection. We apply this view to almost everything in our home. One orange in a bowl

is boring, but a pile of oranges becomes a decorative statement. Michael Smith placed obelisks of lemons

all over the White house and Thierry Despont cobbles together a menagerie of bizarre creatures from old machine parts and farm tools.

Shells constantly work their way into our home. Brought back from dive trips and beach picnics, even

the ugliest lumps of disfigured and disregarded coral are looked upon as treasure and carried back by small hands. These will be added to a heaving mound now assembled on an upstairs terrace. The prettier shells

or nuggets of coral are upgraded from the outside to the inside, finding a home amongst others in a wooden salad bowl or cubicle display case. Of course I allow Domino, my youngest child, to feel she controls this vet-

ting process, just as she feels she has decorated the Christmas tree but as soon as she is asleep I steal back and reposition every ornament.

David and I simply don’t seem to be able to hang just one piece of art; it has to be a collection. We begin

with good intentions, a clean look, we think, and then slowly, slowly other things arrive, and we can’t resist.

One gilt frame leads to another and another. And why hang one black and white photograph when you can hang four more below it? In fact, why not create an entire gallery.

Playing around with piles of shells or lines of photographs or collections of any kind, I like to build them

up, and out, as much as possible. Giving them a bit of meat so to speak. I also like to have fun with the collec-

tions, adding in something unexpected…. Our shells live in an oversized wooden salad bowl for instance, and

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