Photography: Lisa Cohen
At the beginning of her career in the early 1990s, Adelaide worked at Colefax & Fowler in Sydney under the tutelage of Australian designer Martine Burns. A number of those lessons continue to influence Adelaide’s work today.
“Martine used to say that a room needs something to muddle it up, that imperfection can make perfection.” That guidance aligns with Adelaide’s vision today and her affinity with the imperfections found in the natural world. A torn autumnal leaf, the tiny idiosyncrasies found in handmade seagrass wallcoverings or artisan-blocked textile patterns are equally appealing to her eye.
Adelaide frequently incorporates a painting, cushion or rug into a room to create an unexpected clash with the overall design scheme, piquing visual interest. Often, she’ll introduce a single vivid colour, like mustard, to give a space a cultivated vibrancy. “These are joyous colours, and occasionally, if a room is a little dull, we throw the mustard yellow in, and it goes, ‘Ding!’ There is a certain shade of yellow that works in almost any environment.”
While these rich and deep yellow tones are relatively recent additions in Adelaide’s chromatic lexicon, their associations hark back to some of her earlier memories.
“Buttery yellow is a colour that I love living with. It’s the same shade as the fresh cream brought up from the dairy each morning in tin pails when I was growing up. It was a brighter yellow and thicker consistency than the cream you’d buy in shops. We’d have it with everything, and Mum would also use it to make the very best butter. So, for me, yellow is a happy colour and provides a pop of sunniness that feels joyous.”
Added to the palette she loved at home were the sun-kissed hues of the small seaside town of Terrigal, where the family would holiday for a month each year at their beach house. Aside from the relief of escaping Rossgole’s [where she was raised in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales] high-summer heat and flies, Adelaide loved the fresh sea breeze and delighted in the bleached timber and caramel-coloured sand on offer there.
“Australian landscapes, in all their varied glory, showcase all of my favourite colours – like the deep gold grasses seen in these vast paddocks in the late summer,” Adelaide Bragg.
This may be the origin of her signature soft caramel, a colour she blends perfectly with other shades.
“If you add the caramel, all of a sudden everything else pops. It provides a base that allows you to be brave with strong colours. That grounding tone ensures the really saturated hues, like a very strong yellow, can be truly liveable, balanced and easy on the eye. It is not as massive a jump visually from an earthy colour to a bright yellow as it would be from white to something super-saturated. You can be brave with strong colour in a space when it’s balanced, and the surfaces have a natural weave or texture.”
When Adelaide isn’t using colour to add an element of perfect imperfection into a room, she’ll sometimes introduce a contrasting pattern, like checks, to give a space more personality. In recent times she has also embraced spots, which speak to the halcyon days of her childhood years in the family home. She vividly recalls finding a sheet of newly minted stamps on her father’s desk.
Printed down one side, like little spots of joy, were a series of technicolour circles used by the printers to check the reproduction of each hue. Adelaide stopped in her tracks: she recalls feeling electrified by the colours and she recognises now that it was a defining creative moment in her early life. It’s this level of excitement and delight that Adelaide seeks to share with her clients when using golden hues.
This is an edited extract from ‘City, Coast & Country’ by Adelaide Bragg with Robyn Lea, with photography by Lisa Cohen and Robyn Lea, published by Thames & Hudson Australia, $90.
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