Kitchen stories.
On colourful cupboards, wonky drawers and Tessa Kiros' deeply nostalgic new book.
Tessa Kiros writes beautiful books. I read them like memoirs and they’re as gorgeous as any coffee table book on Tuscany, where Tessa lives with her Italian husband and their two daughters.
Her latest, Now & Then, is Tessa’s most memoir-ish book yet, and I can’t get enough of it. And not just because the (HUGE) hardback seems to have been marinated in the sunshine and colours of Italy and Tessa’s half-Greek Cypriot, half-Finnish heritage.
Look!
(These are the rough-and-readiest of pics I just grabbed five mins ago with my phone at the kitchen table — fittingly! Unfiltered or saturated because they don’t need it.)
It’s also because of the stories Tessa tells, through words and photos (not only of Italy, but also her childhood in South Africa, and travels to Mexico, New Orleans and Thailand).
But can we just back up and look at those kitchen cupboards, above — how beautiful is that blue?
And how great to see cupboards with a visibly wonky, well-used drawer and missing door handle or two?
They remind me of our own, 20-something year old kitchen cabinets, which we’ve been repainting ever since moving here from Oxford. Right now, they’re bright lemon, inspired by the cover of Ottolenghi Simple, which we had colour-matched at Homebase. The doors aren’t wood, but melamine (I think?), and we don’t bother stripping them each time they get a makeover.
Emptying the food caddy last week, I was inwardly bemoaning the fact that we never get around to painting the insides of the cupboards. Open any door, and you’ll see the telltale splodges of paint jobs past — from a warm, Scandì-inspired red to the charcoal that was a mistake from the start (much too dark).
The layers of colour (literally) hidden behind closed doors tell the story of our kitchen, and our home.
Thinking about it, if we were to paint them now, it would feel a little like painting over all those years. All the memories.
Of course, things can’t always stay the same — cupboard doors will eventually need swapping out, sentimental furniture falls apart and we move homes. But in the knee-jerk response to replace, rather than refresh, we risk losing something so much more meaningful.
Tessa’s latest book is testimony, too, to her love of collecting crockery over the years. It’s an eclectic, story-telling mix of splashy, handpainted local ceramics and delicate china, decorated with roses.
The kitchen is filled with tins, plates and cloths I have brought home from my travels … I collect things that I love. Memories, tastes, colours and stories.
—Tessa Kiros
The antithetis of matchy-matchy, the result is cosy, homely and deeply nostalgic. Enough to make you reconsider passing on your grandparents’ vintage dinner set — only more so if it sparks your own childhood memories. Speaking of which, my brother and I had another session sorting through boxes from our parents’ home last weekend. I can’t believe it’s almost a year since we started the process, when they moved into specialist residential care — a story so many of you resonated with (I’m linking it below).
I wrote a little about my brother and I returning to the boxes, which I’ll save for later this week. And I know you’ll have stories to share, too.
Until then, with love,
XX Jen
What a beautiful book! Your kitchen cabinets are beautiful, too!
That book looks gorgeous!!! I must find a copy. Also, I love your bright yellow cabinets! It’s such a cheery color and probably appreciated in the dreary winter months.