INSIDE KNOWLEDGE
Andrea Harari of Andrea Harari Home Curation Services and Jaggedart on bringing interiors to life
The easiest way to update your home is to start looking at the things you have and try to find value. People sometimes think they need to change everything, or need to buy new things, but in most instances it’s just a case of moving things around. In that way, you can refresh your house and make it look completely different.
It doesn’t matter if your house is extremely modern, with contemporary works of art, or more conventional, it is possible to make old and new objects work together. It might be a colour or a texture that ties everything together. It is about creating a flow that draws your eye from one thing to the next—a dialogue between the objects.
I always make a site-specific assessment. I look at the placement of the windows, the light, the architecture of the building, the colour of the wall. Is it the first room you come into in your house? What are the things you want to see as you walk in? If it’s the bedroom, what do you want to look at when you wake up in the morning? What are the things that everybody else sees? You have to consider all of these things.
We each have our history and our own collection of things. Sometimes you have something that is very dear to you: a photograph, a piece of fabric, a beautiful book or object. That’s what I am looking for. I want to bring them out and give them a new importance by highlighting them and making them part of your everyday life.
I am quite minimalist. I don’t want a space to be completely devoid, but rather a curated selection of very beautiful things. I don’t like an accumulation of clutter; I like texture and three-dimensional objects, you can tell that by what I display in Jaggedart, my Devonshire Street gallery.
As you get older, it is nice to be surrounded by things that have a meaning to you, that are important or remind you of something. But you have to be practical. If you’re working all day, you don’t want lots of things that need to be cleaned all the time.
The secret is in marrying the artwork or object to the right person and the right context. I am very lucky to work in a place where I am surrounded by what for me are beautiful things, then when somebody buys it and that piece goes to their home, the whole cycle has been completed. I believe that every work finds its perfect fit.
The works we sell are very beautiful, very poetic, and you have to buy them because you love them. I never rush something. The art that we show here may become investments, but I don’t push them as that.
I sometimes deal with clients who do not have the same taste that I have, and they ask for things that are not what I would show in the gallery—I completely respect that. I am happy to then source those things. I usually have access to them.
I appreciate craftsmanship. A lot of the works and objects that I source are very serene and there is a maturity. There’s a lot of labour and love, and knowledge of materials. I love that. Especially in a time when everything is disposable. It makes it very special.
If you don’t know what to do with something, but it has value to you, don’t dispose of it—turn it into something else. I know artists who can make something out of it—your favourite book can be made into a piece of jewellery, for example. I think that’s a wonderful way of keeping an object; to transform it into something beautiful.
A frame can make or kill a work. Or, you might have a painting that just by moving it to one side of the room and putting an object on the other, you create a completely different dynamic. It’s in the details.