THE STORY OF LUMIÈRE

There are houses that seem to find us.

We first came across Lumière on Good Friday in 2015. Kerran was preparing for a night shift when she spotted an old cottage for sale in West Hobart, not far from Kerran's childhood home. There was something about it - its old bones, its garden, and all that had been left untouched - that made us curious.

The following day, while Kerran slept after work, Samuel walked past the house with his parents and happened upon its owner in the garden. She kindly invited them inside. By the next day, we were walking through with the real estate agent and our builder.

We had fallen for it.

Perhaps there was something inevitable about it. Many years earlier, when Kerran's parents were themselves young, they had looked at buying the very same house.

A HOUSE SLOWLY MADE

Lumière was never intended to become a perfectly finished house overnight. We loved that it hadn't been extensively renovated. Enough of the original cottage remained for us to understand what it had been, while there was still room for us to imagine what it might become.

In 2017, at Samuel's family shack in Orford, that imagining became a plan. With two glasses of wine, an A4 sheet of paper, a ruler and a pencil, we began drawing an extension.

Those first lines eventually made their way to Design East, and in January 2018 the house began its eighteen-month transformation.

It was an unusually hands-on process. We worked alongside a small group of wonderfully skilled, old-school tradesmen, making decisions as the house revealed itself. Some things were carefully drawn; others were worked out with tape on walls, scraps of paper and a little courage.

Kerran drew the kitchen window during a quiet ten-hour night shift, tracing and photocopying the architrave until the proportions felt right. The main fireplace was first imagined with sticky tape against a wall at Samuel's parents' house. Colours were tested endlessly. Old materials were uncovered. Ideas changed. And choices that occasionally raised an eyebrow on site slowly found their place.

There was no formula for Lumière. We were learning as we went.

FOUND, MADE & GATHERED

Both of us grew up around people who collected things.

Kerran's family home was filled with antiques, paintings and colour; Samuel's father collected maritime pieces, including scrimshaw and old diving helmets. Perhaps because of that, we never wanted Lumière to feel newly decorated. We wanted it to feel gathered.

Pieces came from Tasmanian auction houses, antique stores and tip shops, and from faraway sellers found through Etsy and eBay. Inspiration travelled from English kitchens and old European houses to the Hudson Valley and back home to Tasmania. At a time when many of the materials we loved were difficult to find here, we learnt to seek them out, build relationships and occasionally take a chance.

The house became a meeting place between those influences and the island outside its windows.

Kerran instinctively works through colour, objects and atmosphere, with an equally practical instinct for how things might be made. Samuel brings a love of measurement, drawing and proportion, and an eye for how light moves through a room. Much of Lumière has been worked out between the two of us - drawn, tested, changed and, wherever we could, made by our own hands. Together, we have continued to change the house slowly, allowing rooms to evolve rather than considering them finished.

It is still evolving today.

A HOME FOR VOYAGERS

Somewhere during that transformation, another idea began to take shape.

We had become fascinated by homes elsewhere in the world that were opening their doors as places to stay, gather and create - places that felt personal rather than prescribed. We wondered whether we might create something of our own here in Tasmania.

And so Lumière became a home for voyagers.

What began with an old cottage and a great deal of imagination has grown slowly into the place you find today. The paintings, linen, fires, flowers, old furniture and objects have not been assembled simply to be looked at. They are part of a house intended to be lived in.

When a voyager arrives, we hope they feel some of that history - not only the history that came before us, but the years of making, collecting and changing that have followed.

Lumière is not a finished story.

For a little while, when you stay here, you become part of it too.

Kerran & Samuel

IN THE PRESS & AMONG KINDRED CREATIVES

Over the years, Lumière has quietly found its way into the pages of The Australian, The Age, Australian Women’s Weekly, Country Style, Homes & Gardens UK and Reclaim, whose September 2020 issue featured the house on its cover.

In 2022, Lumière was named among The Australian’s Hot 50 Places to Stay.

The house has also provided a setting for the work of kindred creatives and brands, including The Society Inc. by Sibella Court, Blundstone, Waverley Mills and Montaigne Paris.

We remain open to a small number of considered creative collaborations where there is a natural kinship with Lumière.

Photography above by Marnie Hawson.

Photography on Home Page by Eliska Sharp and Dearna Bond.