Heronwater Design was born out of a reinvention of my original company, BiBi AiCKiN Interiors and the inspiration and involvement of my designer son Oliver Wilkinson of oliverwilkinsondesign.com, on a couple of projects we have started together.
I have always had a passion for design; avidly designing and making dolls clothes and endlessly drawing up plans for “dream houses” as a child.
My first encounter with a highly polished chintz, was with a length of soft grey and green floral curtain fabric that my mother had left over and let me make with my extremely rudimentary 10 year old sewing skills into a “copy” of the Lederhosen like play clothes from the Sound Of Music film. Rather basic and to my mortification, falling apart on my first outing in it, I still remember with such fondness the sheen and stiffness of that glorious fabric. When I was eleven I pleaded with my loving and indulgent mother to let me decorate my bedroom .I chose acres of Marimekko daisies in hot pink and orange. The bedroom no longer exists but I have a special corner in my heart where I love it still.
In my twenties I was accepted into the year long diploma course at The Inchbald School in London. Under the redoubtable architect in charge, Sylvia Mitchell and the watchful eye of the founder, Jacqueline Thwaites, I’ve never worked harder in my life. The student body was both exotically international and from many walks of life. We covered all sorts and varied aspects of Interior Design, each three weeks a project requiring everything from electrical layouts, plans and elevations, coloured renderings, specifications and sample boards to subjects like fine arts and architectural history…and so on.
After living and working in London, I returned to Melbourne and decided to further my Interior Design studies. I was accepted into RMIT in Melbourne but before completing the course the lure of paid employment and a job in an Interior Design company won over. I worked for Ian Archibald and Decollo for a couple of years before going out on my own as BiBi AiCKiN Interiors. At this time I also went back part time to complete a Bachelor of Arts Degree that I had started at Melbourne University before going to London, as I couldn't quite give up on my other passion - the study of history and philosophy - I completed my degree during the first year of my marriage to Sydney architect David Wilkinson.
By the time we had had four children in six years I stepped back from my own business to have more time with the children and to work with my husband instead on several projects for him. When our eldest son was ten and the youngest four, we were offered a project to take on in France. A Melbourne couple had bought a large ramshackle but charming Manoir in a very rustic part of central France which we were to renovate into a B&B for them. The children had two years at the local school and with fourteen wild acres of fields and forest to ramble over and six hired horses for us all to explore the country side on, though sometime very challenging, it was on the whole an idyllic experience. We finished off the adventure by retuning from Marseille to Melbourne on a container ship…and that's another whole story.
It was after David died, cruelly prematurely a couple of years ago, that I came out of semi retirement to take on a project of his that was very close to his heart. And in doing so I have rediscovered the absolute joy and pleasure, inspiration and challenge that design work involves and gives me and thanks to my son Oliver’s involvement and encouragement and his conviction that we should do it, we’ve started up Heronwater Design.
Whilst it is essential to move with the times and vital to embrace advances in design and technology, for me what is most important is to hold a beacon of faith-unwavering in the face of fad or fashion-in what you believe in and love: It's to create, design, furnish and fabric spaces for clients with a harmony of colours and shapes; here and there a burst of humour, a touch of whimsy and overall interiors that invite one to feel a joy, a tranquility and a sense of ease in them. If they enhance the lives of those that inhabit them I feel great satisfaction and in this lies a worthy achievement.
Bibi Aickin
Design Concepts
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Heronwater Design
