Buying a home generally involves a few unknowns – there’s the house itself, let alone the neighbours and the suburb. Jason Penfold and Corey Ashford managed to bypass all that – they’d already been renting their place for two years before striking a deal with the landlords to purchase it.
“They’d lived here for 30 years before us, and we had a lovely relationship with them,” Ashford tells Broadsheet. “It felt like they were choosing to pass their home to us, and it’s an honour to have it.”
The couple, who’ve been together eight years, knew as soon as they saw the cottage in Richmond (a Melbourne inner-city suburb) that it was right for them. “We were living in an apartment at the time, and both instinctively felt this was the next chapter for us,” says Ashford, a lifestyle designer and Dinosaur Designs alum whose luxe food-inspired creations range from incense holders to cutlery.
Now that the house is officially theirs, they’ve started making the odd change, including doing some painting. Penfold is an artist who works with natural history under the moniker Violet Eyes Entomology and collaborates with museums in Australia and overseas. He describes himself as “pretty handy – my sleeves are always metaphorically rolled up”, so he’s the one doing much of the practical work.
“The fact that I get to put my hands to work in our house is really grounding – I feel very lucky and grateful.”
Names: Jason Penfold and Corey Ashford
Live: In a two-bedroom terrace in Richmond, Melbourne
Since: 2020
With: Atlas the whippet
Can you describe the vibe of the place and your approach to decorating it?
CA: Relaxed, and we try to make it as welcoming as possible. We live pretty busy lives, so coming home we want it to be as chill as possible. We’re both bowerbirds, so could very easily fill it to the brim. But we try to curate and edit, and have objects made by [people] we love, or from a holiday that we went on together. Every piece we have evokes a memory or feeling.
JP: We’ve made a space that works for us. It’s a hideaway, but it’s also an invite for people – it can be exactly what we want when we want it.
With both of you working in art and design, what’s it like to set up a place together – do you have the same aesthetics?
JP: Sometimes we go, “This colour doesn’t work for me.” It’s in the small choices that our differences really show. With the bigger ones, for some reason, we’re always on the same page without even talking about it – our ideas are really connected and cohesive.
CA: We’re like a Venn diagram – we have differences, but then there’s a section where we meet in the middle, and that’s where the harmony is. We see things differently, but not in a bad way – it’s just that Jason might see beauty in a feature I’m overlooking because I’m focusing on something else. That’s what keeps it exciting. We keep pushing each other and growing and challenging each other.
Do you like having your own pieces around?
CA: Most things I make it’s because I want something and it’s not available – I don’t make anything that I wouldn’t have in my own home or wouldn’t use myself. I sit with designs for quite a while and live with them before releasing them to the world.
JP: No, because I’d rather have a healthy boundary between my home and studio, and not have the two worlds cross over.
What’s your favourite room in the house?
JP: It’s not a room, but I want it to be a destination – it’s the backyard. We’re in talks with a landscape designer, and plan to make a space that’s really active.
CA: The front room of the house – it’s where I do most of my work when I’m working at home, and it’s so beautiful to be able to sit at the desk looking out the window, watching everyone on the street, and the sun move throughout the day. It gives you enough of a sanctuary that you can rest and recoup, but also allows you to watch the world go by.
And your favourite object?
JP: I’m going to say Corey!
CA: My first answer is also Jason, but then it’s a beautiful big quartz crystal that he found. We keep it in the lounge room, and it has a lot of spiritual energy behind it. Also, we recently purchased a painting by Billy Vanilli of a woman eating an oyster, which represents a lot of what I do with my business.
Where are your favourite places to buy art and homewares?
CA: In terms of art, we like to buy directly from artists as much as possible. We do get a lot from auction houses – Leonard Joel is our go-to. We have pieces that we found in Paris flea markets and vintage shops, and then ones by Mud ceramics and Dinosaur Designs – it’s that mix of old and new for us.
JP: We have some really sleek, timeless pieces from MCM House. We like anything that doesn’t have a time stamp on it.
What do you love about your neighbourhood?
CA: Proximity to the park and river. We live in quite a built-up area, but in less than five minutes you’re at a body of water surrounded by trees.
JP: Everything we require for day-to-day life is, at most, a 10-minute drive away. I think accessibility makes for a happy human.
This article first appeared in Domain Review, in partnership with Broadsheet.
For a look inside the homes of more local creatives, head to our Home Visit series.
