***Excerpt relating to Don Cameron***
Most of the book’s subjects are in situ in the Sherman home, and so on this mild October afternoon, the owner is allowing a small group of the curiously minded to wander through her Federation-era compound, Braelin – the former residence of Sydney’s lord mayor in the the early part of the 20th century – to sit on her Osvaldo Borsani plush velvet easy chairs, sprawl on her Mario Bellini modular sofas and pry into her Don Cameron-designed closets, beautifully backlit, the Australian designer himself points out, to enable Sherman to better appreciate the textured Issey Miyake, Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto creations hanging there.
“Gene could talk you through an art collection and it could be quite impressive, because a lot of the work she had actually commissioned, so she knew the whole story behind it,” Cameron says. He met Sherman while working as a young designer in London. “But what was missing in her vocabulary and her exposure to collecting in its fullness was the idea of collecting furniture and design.”
Cameron is the chief designer of the current Sherman residence – one of almost 20 Gene and Brian owned during their 54-year marriage. He is Sherman’s co-conspirator, creating a home that places art and design in paramount position – occasionally at the expense of practical living. The giant, winged Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan wall sculpture with razor sharp tips that hovers over the stovetop in the Boffi XILA kitchen is in no danger of injuring its owner, because, as Cameron points out, “Gene doesn’t cook”.
