room. The living and dining rooms on
the ground floor are expansive for Hong
Kong standards but are kept uncluttered
with treasured pieces such as custom-
designed rugs and ceramic finds, mixed
with cleverly reworked, much-loved sofas
from Australia to give a sense of familiarity
to the new setting.
The first interior piece the couple
acquired was an apple-green television
cabinet fromOld Shanghai in Ap Lei
Chau. "I had to twist my husband's arm
to agree to the colour, but it is now a firm
favourite," Elisha explains. Red Cabinet is
also one of her go-to places for furniture.
"I have bought a couple of pieces,
including a blanket box for the end of the
bed, a shoe cabinet and two wedding
cabinets," she says. The wedding cabinets
are painted in a deep royal navy custom-
matched to her specifications to mimic
the traditional blue in her ginger jar
collection, which takes pride of place on
the surface of both cabinets.
The master bedroom on the second
floor is Elisha’s favourite space. "We built
window seats into the bay windows and
they have the best view in the house, and
offer a place to curl up and read on a
misty afternoon," she says. With her well-
honed eye for design and use of space,
the window seats were also built to serve
as storage for shoes and handbags.
The children's rooms upstairs were
designed in collaboration with them.
"The kids all had input into their rooms,
largely suggesting a favourite theme
that we could work around – ‘cricket’,
‘skateboarding’ and the obligatory
‘butterfly’," she says. "It was fun choosing
paper lanterns in Peel Street, Central,
for my daughter's bedroom, hung with
fun-coloured ribbons from Sham Shui Po,"
she adds.
The home has proved to be an ideal
place for this family. "I think we all deserve
a home that makes us happy and to that
end I am always on the look-out for things
I love," she says. Elisha recalls a day-trip
to Zhuhai in China when she found huge
blue and white planters covered in moss
and reeds and with tadpoles living in
them.
"There was no way I was leaving
without them," she says. Hong Kong
and this home has afforded the family
the luxury of intimacy and flexibility -
everyone has somewhere to go and
everyone has a room filled with their own
treasures. Most importantly Hong Kong
is now home, and as the designer says,
you are never quite sure what you are
going to find when you turn the corner. "I
love wandering the streets without a fixed
destination in mind and seeing what turns
up along the way."
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