Magic House

One of the things I most love about living in London is that it's always surprising.

Through a stroke of luck, I just discovered Khadambi Asalache's house. It's on Wandsworth Road and looks like a normal Georgian house on the outside. Step inside and you're blown away by an amazing fretwork design covering every wall in the house. I'm not very knowledgeable about Asalache, but from what I can gather he was already quite busy, engaged in writing poetry, fiction, working as a civil servant, which makes the twenty some years of work behind it even more impressive. It makes the interior redesign shows on telly look laughable and simplistic compared to the amount of work (and by just one person!) that must have gone into this house.

As far as I can tell, it's not open to the public at the minute, so for now we have to settle for appreciation at a distance.

The Guardian has a great photo slideshow:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2009/jan/20/khadambi-asalache-national-trust?picture=342031664