[The Guardian] 'People fell under its spell': Shelley Klein on growing up in one of Britain's finest modernist houses

'People fell under its spell': Shelley Klein on growing up in one of Britain's finest modernist houses

Textile designer Bernat Klein found solace in High Sunderland, his minimal 1950s house in the Scottish Borders. In her memoir, his daughter recalls returning to her childhood home

In December 2009, Shelley Klein left her home in the fishing village of Port Isaac, Cornwall, and set off for the house in the Scottish Borders where she had grown up. The 450-mile journey was ostensibly the result of her recent decision to move in with her elderly, widowed father (alone of her siblings, she was able to to do this, being single and self-employed). But in truth it wasn’t the only reason; another, almost equally powerful force was also in play. In the three decades since she’d last lived there, Klein had never been able fully to shake off the spell cast by High Sunderland, the house in question. Wherever she went, whatever she did, it was always at the back of her mind, to the point where she wondered whether her feelings for it were entirely rational. Can a house be loved as a person is? Perhaps not. All she knew was that it was a part of her, just as it was a part of her father.

Adults who return home often revert to being teenagers – we’ve all done it, even in the course only of a long weekend – and our parents, too, tend to talk to us just as they always did once we’re over the threshold. In the first moments after her arrival at High Sunderland, Shelley drank in its old, familiar smells: paprika, woodsmoke, freshly ground coffee. But the mood didn’t last long. Carrying her possessions from van to house, her father was horrified to see among them a Victorian chair – a piece of furniture he unhesitatingly deemed to be “ghastly”. Nor was he pleased to see her arranging a collection of potted herbs on the kitchen windowsill. Couldn’t she put them elsewhere? For instance, in her bedroom. Irritated, Shelley asked what he had against them. “They’re messy,” he said. “They spoil the line of the house.” In his eyes, only chives, a pleasingly “vertical” plant, could ever be even vaguely acceptable as interior decoration.

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Source: 'People fell under its spell': Shelley Klein on growing up in one of Britain's finest modernist houses

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