The owner of Bird House in Plettenberg Bay, wasn’t looking for a good-mannered facade or gracious symmetry and proportion for his beachfront accommodation. An artist renowned for his painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpting and performance art, Beezy Bailey’s family holiday home next to Robberg Beach has plenty of freewheeling magic about it.
Its light-weight design, simple silhouette and laidback style reach back to the vernacular of the wooden fishermen’s cottages that once dotted this coast.
It has a mellow patina and delicious warmth and convenience, but it’s kitted out for contemporary living.
If all you want to do is get up late, walk on the beach, enjoy your favourite water sport, then make a paella or grill prawns for lunch before falling asleep on a lounger in the shade, then Bird House is almost certainly a place to consider checking into for a weekend house rental or longer holiday home rental.
More so if you like your surroundings to feature the work of an artist who famously collaborated in ‘visually jamming’ with rock star David Bowie, indie-rock giant Dave Matthews and Brian Eno. While you may not get to be part of one of Beezy and Eno’s ‘sound paintings’, there’s enough here to give you a glimpse of the rich vein of creativity that’s stimulating contemporary South Africa art.
At the heart of this unique home is the living area whose ceiling is an open, timber-lined pitched roof. Its focus is an old-fashioned iron wood-burning stove. There are comfortable sofas and armchairs at one end and a large dining table at the other with, beyond, the kitchen envisaged as a ‘lean-to’ extension to the main body of the house.
During summer, doors from the living area to the stoep can be thrown open and beyond the outside dining table, there’s a simmering view across the vlei to the fynbos-clad hills. Here and there, antique Cape furniture keeps alive the context of this otherwise urbane family holiday home.
Escape to an art lovers’ sanctuary
There are four bedrooms to choose from, one of them twin-bedded with the option of an additional old-fashioned half-poster set into a crook of the L-shaped room.
In the main bedroom, a free-standing bath shares the room with the bed and is positioned so that the bather soaking in the water has all the advantage of the lovely views to the surroundings.
All the rooms are simply furnished with a mix of old-fashioned English and South African furniture, rugs and kelims, bedspreads of shweshwe print and woven kente textiles, hand-painted ceramics, linen-covered armchairs and, of course, a collection of paintings that would make any art gallery sick with envy.
Recycled door and window frames are in keeping with the local vernacular while, instead of timber, the exterior is clad in a grey-painted tin.
A deck fronts the house on the view-ward side, a covered portion shielding the dining table from the sun while an alfresco area has a fire-pit, the focus of which is a braai area surrounded by built-in terraced seating which steps down towards it. In the evening, this is the best place to sit with an ice-cold glass of chardonnay while the sea bass still in its skin is being grilled on the fire with a dollop of olive oil and squeeze of lemon.
If Bird House is unavailable to book for your dates, browse our other perfect hideaways in Plettenberg Bay
Edited by Dawn Kennedy