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Fireplaces J OE L ROB I N S ON
Home and hearth
A welcoming fireplace will be a big selling point for prestige homes this winter season
nterior designer Thomas Hamel says a fireplace is the perfect focal point for many interior spaces. “Fireplaces have always played an important role in my thoughts when designing a room,” he says. Heading into what is likely to be a busier than normal winter sales season, fireplaces are certainly set to be an alluring feature in the marketing of prestige homes. Indeed their increasingly cool style is almost as important as their practicality. “Obviously in history, fireplaces were of great importance for the required heat they generated,” Hamel says, while adding that these days they are not so much a necessity as a desirable design feature. “There is nothing quite like the glow and warmth, perceived or actual, that comes from an open flame,” he says. With international travel not on the agenda this winter, vendors will be lighting their open-for-inspection fireplaces to welcome prospective buyers. In a renovated 1930s South Yarra townhouse, the fireplace in the living area takes centre stage. Owner Sarah Madders, of interior design firm Wash Studio, paid $1.27 million for the Avoca Street property in 2011 and handled the renovation. She had Anchor Ceramics custom-make the tiled open fireplace where a former fireplace had been located but hidden away. “The fireplace gets used a lot during winter,” Madders says. “It’s the perfect place to have a glass of red wine on a cold, wintry night.” The living area meets a separate dining room, across the central hallway from the marble kitchen and separate meals area, which opens through custom steel-framed doors to a new courtyard designed by Eckersley Garden Architecture. Upstairs there are three bedrooms and two marble bathrooms. Kay & Burton South Yarra agents Nicole Gleeson and Nicky Rowe have a $3.1 million to $3.3 million guide for the auction on June 20 . Recently a Brighton home on New Street with a classic fireplace, one of four in the home, sold for $3,300,500 through Marshall White Bayside agents Ben Veith and Dahli Woosnam. The latest trend in fireplace design is the suspended style, some of which even rotate. They may have been around for five or so decades, with French designer Dominique Imbert’s suspended, rotatable flying-saucer-shaped Gyrofocus fire, a 50-year-old design classic worthy of any James Bond 32
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THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN
| JUNE 13-14, 2020
