New Rural | Ingrid Weir
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Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book, hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Ingrid Weir: My name's Ingrid Weir. I'm a designer and photographer based in Sydney, Australia, and my first book is called New Rural: Where to Find It and How to Create It.
Suzy Chase: You write in the book: "Once upon a time, escaping a small town and making it in the city was a common dream, a chance to find work, meet people from all walks of life, discuss ideas... and then things changed." So what changed?
Ingrid Weir: I think just one word, which is Internet. I've just been reading a book about the Golden Age of Travel. And interestingly, in that book, they said before 1850, people really didn't travel that much for pleasure, if at all. And then they had... One word that changed all that was steam: steam trains, steam powering the big ships, steam making the hotels warmer when you went to them. And that one thing changed everything. And reading that, I did think how massive this change has been in our lives, which is the Internet and connectivity.
Suzy Chase: So you explore a new way of living that combines space and freedom of rural existence with the connections and opportunities of the modern world. I think this concept really took on steam in the midst of the pandemic. I was reading a new Gallup survey, and it shows how the desire to live in a rural or small-town setting has risen substantially over the past two years. So I'm assuming you started on this book before March 2020.
Ingrid Weir: No, I think that's actually exactly when I... A few months later I started on the book. But I had bought the house 10 years before, so it had been a longer time coming, as it were. But definitely, the thinking around it all accelerated, and I think there's many different articles I've been reading and surveys, like you said, about people thinking in different ways now.
Suzy Chase: So I was asking you if you started this around March 2020, because I was wondering if your book started out one thing but kind of took on new meaning as the pandemic went on.
Ingrid Weir: The pandemic crystallized something that I'd been thinking for some time and noticing. So I think it was there before that, which was this interesting energy emanating from some of the little country towns that I would visit, and people trying things and doing things and experimenting. And that was an energy you might have associated with cities in the past, and I just found it very interesting. So I guess the pandemic, like everyone, it made you think a lot and think about things a lot. And so that was something that I fastened onto. And also, I liked that it was a positive thing. There's lots of negative kind of connotations we can discuss, but I like fastening onto something positive, which is what I saw this movement was.
Suzy Chase: So speaking of creativity, Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, had a huge impact on you. And recently I heard someone call her the godmother of creativity. Could you talk a little bit about the exercise where you wrote a letter to your younger self and what that letter imagined?
Ingrid Weir: The Artist's Way is always in bookshops and has been for years, and for very good reason. Some of her exercises, they can unlock parts of yourself. The one that struck me was when you had to write a letter to yourself at the age you were then, from, say, 70 or 80, and you're describing all those intervening years and what you've done. And it's such a different perspective, going through your life, so I really had to think [inaudible 00:04:02]. And then I sort of had written in the letter, "Oh, you've got a little place in the country, and you divide your time between the city and the country," never thinking that that would come to happen. But then it was a few months later, I traveled up to Hill End, and it all started to fall into place. So I think there was something very interesting in her exercises that she can bring out these deeper instincts and desires you might have.
Suzy Chase: Do you think just writing it down solidified it for you?
Ingrid Weir: Yes, absolutely, or making yourself think about what you want. I think that was a powerful part of the exercise.
Suzy Chase: So you bought a 100-year-old schoolmaster's house in a remote rural area called Hill End, New South Wales, Australia. What jumped out at you? How did you know this was your house?
Ingrid Weir: Well, it was the only one for sale, is the honest answer. Because I really fell in love with Hill End. And the thing is, there's not many houses there. It's a very small village. A lot of the houses are run by National Parks and Wildlife, so there's a handful of houses that come up. Some of the other houses looked much more romantic: the miner's houses, a little bit falling down, kind of gorgeous. This house was a bit sturdy and double brick, and so I sort of had an idea that this could be a great place. But when I actually moved in, and a friend of mine in the country, she said, "Oh, double brick in the country. How terrific." And I realized it's actually a wonderful house, because it's very solid and comfortable. And then I brought in the romantic touches more with my decorating style.
Suzy Chase: I am fascinated by Hill End. Can you give me a brief history of the town?
Ingrid Weir: Yeah. So Hill End is in a mountainous area. It's about four hours out of Sydney going inland. And gold was found there in the 19th century. So very briefly, it became the third biggest town in our state in the 1870s. And they had 28 pubs, they had a sort of opium den and oyster bar. Thousands of people were up there. And it was over fairly soon and did sort of die down, and a lot of the houses fell down. Some were taken away, literally, to other places. And so it became a sleepy little town with a second spurt of interest when a lot of well-known Australian artists discovered it in the 1940s. And from then on, it has had a very strong artistic connection.
Suzy Chase: I love that it had 28 pubs.
Ingrid Weir: Now it has one.
Suzy Chase: It needs about 12 more. So can you please read the excerpt that you wrote in the book about Hill End?
Ingrid Weir: Yes. "Hill End has an easy-on-the-eye appeal and almost storybook quality, with its quaint old buildings and kangaroos hopping across the street. In the evening, the sun sets with a dusky pink glow. With a population of 102, there are more kangaroos than people. After driving through a long avenue of trees, you arrive at a grand old country pub opposite a general store and cafe where people sit outside surrounded by banks of lavender. It's a village at the end of the road. But if you stay longer or listen a bit, there's a streak of wilder, stronger energy under the surface. You can see why artists have been drawn here."
Suzy Chase: So I found it interesting that during the 19th century gold rush, Hill End was a place of potential hope and fortune, and I think that potential hope and fortune took on a whole new meaning in your life in the past 10 years, don't you think?
Ingrid Weir: Yeah, and this is interesting. When I was doing film and TV, I had a run of doing comedy shows with a kind of negative bias. And after I'd done that for a while, I really got to this point where I thought, "I want something positive. What do I really like? I want something with a bit more simplicity and positivity." And that was around the time my thinking changed, and I did come to Hill End. So yeah, I think you're right there: It does contain something of that.
Suzy Chase: I'd love to hear about the glass plate negatives that were discovered in a garden shed in Sydney.
Ingrid Weir: That's the Holtermann Collection. So Holtermann was a kind of huckster, almost businessman who was up at Hill End. But what he did was terrific. He got a couple of very fine photographers to come up and photograph the gold rush. And it was on glass plates. That was then lost for many, many years till the 1950s and found in a garden shed in Sydney.
Ingrid Weir: You can get quite obsessed with the collection, because you really get a sense of the miners, and they kind of look a bit rock-and-roll. And there's a fantastic sign writer that was up there, so you get incredible graphics. It's now in the State Library of New South Wales, and some people there have cleaned up the glass negatives, so you get a real clarity, looking at these shots, not that sort of muddy look that a lot of old photos have. And they're such good photos that I think people are drawn to this collection as well.
Suzy Chase: You write in the book: "Experiences from when you were very young can shape your attitude towards a place, something you're trying to recreate or leave behind." This is how it was for you. That concept really, really resonates with me. What are some different ways we can discover our place, what we should be looking for?
Ingrid Weir: Yes. I've said in my book some of the things I looked out for. I said a cup of good coffee, not really as a joke. That actually was a consideration. I love beautiful buildings. I love a place where you could swim, even a little lake or something. But then I did interview a wonderful man, David [Glenn 00:09:52], who's an older man, a gardener. And he said something about finding a place in the country which I think is the true star, which is to find a place that you respond to emotionally. And I think that's very good advice for people looking for a place in the country.
Suzy Chase: So we found our place. We respond to it emotionally. Something that people don't discuss much is considering how far away you want to be from the city. What should we be thinking about in terms of distance from the city?
Ingrid Weir: Yeah, I think this is a vital point and not discussed much. In the book, I've divided the sections into Near and Far. Near is where it's within two hours of a city center, and I think it makes all the difference with the coming and going. It might be something where you need to get into the city to have some meetings or spend a few days. Alternatively, it's a place you're going to have as a weekender. The two hour makes it a lot easier. Four hours is where Hill End is, but that brings its own kind of wildness and wonderful quality about it as well.
Suzy Chase: So what don't you get in Hill End? What do you have to travel four hours for? A doctor?
Ingrid Weir: Well, it's a small place, Hill End. There is a nurse there, and you can be airlifted out, so there is that aspect of it, which is always good to know. But it does feel like you're on a sort of ship at sea there, because you're surrounded by a lot of national park, and you're just this little kind of community in the midst of a big, vast area.
Suzy Chase: One town in the book that I'd love for you to chat about is Bundeena. Is that how you pronounce it?
Ingrid Weir: Bundeena.
Suzy Chase: Bundeena, New South Wales, a lost-in-time suburb. Can you describe this beautiful place?
Ingrid Weir: You do drive through a beautiful national park to get there, and it does feel wild coming through. And suddenly you come across this little suburb, and it's all around these lovely little beaches, and it has a real charm to it. I think, though, since I've visited it, things have changed quite fast. Anywhere coastal in Australia, and I'm sure in the U.S., it has a village-y feeling. People have really gravitated towards it. It's incredibly attractive at the moment, so it's actually had a few changes since I first wrote about it.
Suzy Chase: Tell me about Sibella Court, I love that name, who lives in the village with her family, and her take on Bundeena. How did she end up there?
Ingrid Weir: Yeah, Sibella is a very interesting woman. I'd call her a real trailblazer, particularly in the Australian design world. And she's a woman of great enthusiasms and curiosity. She had this thing where she said, "I get in the car at a sort of drop of a hat. I'll jump in a car and go anywhere." And so she'd had friends in the area, and that's how she discovered Bundeena. And I think that's quite a common thing, is that people discover areas through friends. And then if you move to that area, you do have friends in the area, which is a wonderful thing.
Suzy Chase: What does she do for a living?
Ingrid Weir: She used to be a stylist in New York for many years, and she has her own shop. She also has now moved into product design and has been designing hardware which is really quite beautiful, and I use some of it in the kitchen in Hill End to update some door handles and knobs, to update some Ikea cupboards.
Suzy Chase: The wonderfully magical part about this book is how you weave in growing up in suburban Australia, your travels to the United States. You lived in Pennsylvania while your father, Peter Weir, was directing the movie Witness, and you took trips to New York City, which seemed like a lifetime away from Australia. Then you finished school and got involved in costume design and set design on TV shows and films, and then you got involved in decorating the Monkey Bar. I'd love for you to tell me a bit about that.
Ingrid Weir: That was when I worked with my father on the film Master and Commander. I did the graphic design that was used, the log books and maps in the film. And then, as a kind of side project, I designed this cafe for the actors to hang out in. And it was the start of my great love of designing spaces for people. I hadn't worked with him before that because I wanted to sort of chart my own path, but definitely, I loved my childhood and growing up, and it was such a beautiful, rich texture, and particularly times in New York. Quite a bit of time there. And it's definitely something that I would say I treasure.
Suzy Chase: Okay. Yesterday I watched Picnic at Hanging Rock. It was so dreamy and magical in itself. Did that aesthetic have any influence on you?
Ingrid Weir: It's interesting you say that, because I actually have a side hustle where I look after Picnic at Hanging Rock. I'm sort of the custodian of it, as it were, in terms of international film sales and working here with the National Film and Sound Archive. And I do love the aesthetic of Picnic and the great cameraman who dad worked with, Russell Boyd. And yeah, I guess it's shooting the Australian bush in that dreamy way using the golden light. Perhaps it has. I never thought it directly, but it could have had some influence.
Suzy Chase: The light was impeccable.
Ingrid Weir: Well, it's interesting, photographing the Australian bush. It can look rather gray and harsh. I think it looks the most beautiful in the magic hour. And strange to say, maybe a bigger influence on me was the Terrence Malick film Days of Heaven, which was only shot in the magic hour.
Suzy Chase: What are some things you didn't know about rural life?
Ingrid Weir: I have said in the book, some practical things. One is about the expense of getting furniture out there, the travel expense. And not just if you load it all up and go, but if you're continually adding to the house, it can really add up, so you sort of have to plan for that a lot.
Ingrid Weir: I see that there's a very strong thread of friendship in the book. It's a lot about friends. And I do feel that being in a rural area, having people to stay on the weekends, my friendships deepened, and I treasure that. And then doing the book, when I was interviewing some people, some of them were friends I knew, some I'd met for the first time, I felt a sense of kinship and friendship with them, which was a lovely, lovely thing to feel. And I think when you're out in the country, maybe barriers are down a bit more. I'm not sure what it is, but it's a lovely way of connecting with people.
Suzy Chase: I'm curious about how First Nation people contributed to this book, in terms of accuracy of wording.
Ingrid Weir: Yes, that was important. And what Hardie Grant, the publishers, did was that they had a First Nations consultant do a thorough read of the manuscript, and then in a really detailed way, go through each area and name the traditional owners and continuing custodians of that area, which was important.
Ingrid Weir: The other great contributor was a man called Daniel O'Leary, who I interviewed, who runs a wonderful cafe restaurant in the country. And he is a Bundjalung man of First Nations heritage. And he's doing something really interesting: In the cafe, he's bringing in the language and some of the foods of First Nations people and just kind of starting a conversation. And it's a very interesting space to visit, and it's a real community space. People drop by, and they're very fond of him, and they like seeing him. That was a lovely, warm space to visit, and got in some very interesting ideas through his perspective.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Ingrid Weir: So my website is IngridWeir.com.au. My Instagram is @ingridweir.
Suzy Chase: To purchase New Rural, head over to DecoratingbytheBook.com. And thank you so much, Ingrid, for coming on Decorating by the Book podcast.
Ingrid Weir: Oh, thanks, Suzy. I really enjoyed talking to you.
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