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A vision of calm

Designer, mohair textile maker and creative collaborator Frances van Hasselt has created a unique home in the small town of Prince Albert, in South Africa’s Great Karoo.

Words Robyn Alexander. Photographs Warren Heath/Bureaux. Styling Sven Alberding/Bureaux

No matter how much of a grown-up you are, sometimes your mother knows best. This is the maxim brought to mind by the story of how mohair designer Frances van Hasselt came to own her luminously lovely home in the remote country town of Prince Albert, in South Africa’s arid Great Karoo region. Van Hasselt’s family first moved here when she was just one year old – so, she says, it has of course always been her “home base”. After spending some time away from her hometown, studying and working, van Hasselt returned a few years back to start the eponymously named FRANCES V.H Mohair, the mohair-weaving business she runs as part of her mission to create special, sustainable rugs, tapestries and blankets that honour the unique landscapes and products of the Karoo region.

At the time, she didn’t have a place of her own, yet when this property within walking distance of her family’s home came onto the market, van Hasselt was anything but instantly smitten. The house hadn’t been lived in for several years, was surrounded by neglected land and had had some unfortunate renovations inflicted on it; she says she “could not envisage what it could become” at the time. Her mother, however, was convinced that van Hasselt could do exactly that, and fortunately she was both persuasive and, in the end, absolutely correct. Says van Hasselt of her beautifully reworked home now: “I have to say this was initially my mother’s vision, and I could not be more grateful for the way in which it has played out.”

One of the last remaining smallholdings on the edge of the town, van Hasselt’s property is of a historic type that included a cottage, a dam for water storage and a small orchard or some land for subsistence farming. As a result, there is now space for it to incorporate both her house and a separate studio building, as well as having an adjacent field or two where a herd of mohair-producing Angora goats roams. The house overlooks these fields, with an ever-changing vista beyond them of the Swartberg mountains. “To be in a setting like this and yet still in the parameters of the town is very special, in that it evokes childhood memories of how I grew up,” explains van Hasselt.

The renovated house is designed to look like a typical vernacular cottage from the outside, while the interior feels spacious, contemporary and relaxed, and incorporates numerous very personal touches that bring in colour and texture via salvaged pieces, plants, art and books. It’s also filled with light – but given just how hot it can get here during the summer months, ensuring that this would be the case necessitated the renovation being done in a way that allows light to enter, while simultaneously keeping the rooms cool.

“Simple, personal; nothing is new, eve thing has a story .” Frances van Hasselt

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2022-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-09-22T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://good.pressreader.com/article/282415583129602

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