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Imaginarium | A compendium of Inspiration

Imaginarium is a magical place, revealed in an oversized picture book of objects, travel, colour & interiors. It is an immersive visual journey, through my 25 years in the world of styling & interiors, that invites you to use it for your own creativity, to keep as a beautiful object on your coffee table, beckoning you to turn a page each day. Please feel free to lose yourself among its pages, allowing it to spark your imagination for faraway lands & special places.

 

"This book is a combination of my past & present, a blend of the many photographs I have taken on my travels anchored with the interiors & objects I have created & designed, as captured by some of my favourite photographers. The pagination of IMAGINARIUM reveals the palettes I love to work with, presented in an entrancing colour rhythm, a place where storytelling requires no words.
I gather experiences, memories, colours, scent & ideas just as I collect objects. They all become my life library, which I draw upon for inspiration to dream up & create all that I design – part history, some real, some imagined, and a whole lot of make-believe. My own cabinet of curiosities cum library – this is my Imaginarium."
- SC

 

Snow
Forest
Mountains

 

A FOREWORD

 

I have always been drawn to visual storytelling & photography. Yet despite many years of styling hundreds of shoots, I had never stepped behind the camera. It was a trip to Central Asia in 2006 with my mother, Dee, that first inspired me to pick up a Nikon 35mm film camera & start taking my own pictures. From that moment on, I was completely hooked. I went on to shoot the images for The Stylist’s Guide to NYC, as well as the travel photos for my books Gypsy & Nomad. I don’t think of myself as a photographer; rather, I think of my camera as a tool to prompt my memory & capture compositions from my travels that I can use later for reference in my designs. I travel to seek inspiration.

 

I concentrate on the experience of the journey, endeavour to connect with the way people live in different environments, to find exotic materials & explore how they are used, to observe craftsmen & ateliers, to discover colour combinations both man-made & natural, to open my senses to scents & soundscapes. Travel is a welcome creative interruption to daily life & the agenda becomes to observe, immerse, embrace & soak up all the details to file away in my IMAGINARIUM. I first imagine the spaces I work with based on my experiences & memories – the colours, scents & ideas I have gathered. I collect them like objects. They all become my life library, which I draw on for inspiration to dream up the interiors & products I design. This alchemy is part history, part reality, and whole lot of make-believe. IMAGINARIUM is a combination of my past & present, featuring photographs taken by me on my travels, as well as images of many of the interiors I have created over that same period, shot by some of my favourite photographers. Inspired by my love of history & of photographic film, Polaroids & pagination boards, IMAGINARIUM is a place where storytelling requires no words.

 

Snow
Forest
Mountains

 

The colour palettes I love to work with unfold through the pages of this book. I have always been fascinated by watching a magazine come to life in a small format on the pagination wall: seeing the way the rhythm & threads of colour are revealed across the whole magazine before it is bound together & single pages are turned. I have applied that process to making IMAGINARIUM: considering the book as a whole while also breaking it down into individual spreads & pages. Pulling it apart, putting it back together, until the story was the one I wanted to tell. I grew up in a house surrounded by nature & beauty. Middle Harbour & all its wonders were a stone’s throw away; our garden was a magical place of colour & texture; our house was filled with textiles & art & books & treasures from faraway lands – even our everyday plates were souvenirs from Mum’s travels. My mother was a monumental force in my life. She not only encouraged every single craft class or workshop I dreamt of doing, but also showed me how to look at the world & see colour, sound, depth, vista, height, proportion & composition. She opened my eyes & my heart to the romance of travel. Mum was a textile collector, teacher & globetrotter, who revelled in colour, technique, travel, history, people, knowledge, traditional crafts & how they were passed down through generations. My father is a residential master builder; his deep appreciation of bricks sparked my curiosity about materials & finishes. (Dad’s favourite finish is satin nickel.) He taught me how to manipulate a space – how to see it without walls & then how to move those walls. Together, we would walk the streets of Sydney & New York, Dad pointing out the differences in the styles of brickwork that revealed their time in history & their origin according to colour, shape & texture, as well as how the master bricklayers had so artfully stacked them: English, Flemish, running, Dutch & the dental work! He taught me the language of building sites, which I love to this day – the smell of sand & wet cement is such a vivid scent from my childhood, triggering many memories. I have a long-standing love of libraries & books – all kinds of books.

 

Snow
Forest
Mountains

 

 
I read voraciously but unfortunately do not have the memory for quotes & words – my mind needs the prompts & cues of notes & photographs, souvenirs & props. I have a vivid imagination & like to think that I have a librarian who lives in my head. The library of my imagination looks a little like the library on the top floor of the New York Yacht Club – it’s not grand with spiral staircases & witches’ walks, it’s more leather club chairs, well-loved Persian rugs, a carafe of water on a side table, labelled oak files to house the index cards with their typed Dewey Decimal classifications & tables piled high with books waiting to be sorted by an old librarian, who is hard of hearing and likes catnaps throughout the day. IMAGINARIUM is an actual place, as well as a place in my imagination. My design studio & shop are housed in a 300-metre square warehouse built in the early 1900s. Overflowing arched bookshelves tickle the ceiling alongside labelled & numbered drawers that were once shop-fitting pieces. Art lines the walls, desks are old dressmakers tables & a ceramic slop sink transported from the US sits below a hand-painted sign that captures my philosophy: ‘F*ck Everything Become a Pirate.’ My studio encapsulates the timeless essence of a Cabinet of Curiosities – encouraging you to pick up, admire, comment, marvel & wonder at the objects that brim & spill from the many drawers, shelves, boxes, compartments. A place of show & tell. I have followed a magical path throughout my twenty-five year career – I have always been freelance & felt the strength of that, like the wind in my hair – a freedom that lets me imagine what I want to do & to follow it.
 
My love of still-life in all art forms & interiors is the foundation to all I do. I invite you to use IMAGINARIUM to inspire your own projects or keep as a beautiful object that sits comfortably on your coffee table. Each day, a page can be turned to unfold new discoveries. Please feel free to lose yourself among its pages & let it spark your imagination for faraway lands & special places.

 

 

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Watch the interview with Karen McCartney

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