photograph by Brian Culy

Surrounding ourselves with things we love has always been a big part of our lives.

Home Base Collections grew out of this passion, our combined talents and an ever increasing respect for the environment.

We have always enjoyed creating and styling things, from TV commercials, design, art and photography. And when we decided to start making things for ourselves and to share with others, we also made a commitment to try and achieve this with as little impact as possible on the environment.

Homebase Collections wants to take its time ‘like slow food’ and carefully create valued objects for us and you to live a long life with.

Leanne at work

Work room

Home Base Collections has created a range of fabrics inspired by the things we love about New Zealand. Icons we remember, things we had forgotten. Something pretty but not too pretty, feminine but not too girly, sometimes more masculine, thought provoking but kind to the eye, soft, beautiful & honest. A leaf or an anchor, a symbol of hope & unity. Something you will never tire of, a holiday for you & for the earth.

A holiday is something we all love, it’s a time to slow down, a time to reflect. This range is about exactly that. It’s about our love of nature, our sense of place in New Zealand, about softness and simplicity treading lightly on the planet and enjoying the simple things. Holiday is a range that reflects those values. The colour ways are restful and the designs are comfortingly familiar but simply contemporary.

Leanne Culy – artist / stylist / designer

Born in Waipawa in 1963, but spent most of her adult life in Wellington were she worked as a freelance graphic designer and stylist in the film industry.

After having 2 children, Beanie and Billie she and her husband spent 4 years in the Wairarapa, before moving to the Bay of Islands. It was there that the extreme isolation and beauty drove her back to her art.

I have a huge concern for the environment.
In Northland, with it’s lush and largely untouched beauty, the kind of change and development that is taking place on the landscape more recently, I found disturbing. We have such a great opportunity for compromise. Being such a young country, we could learn so much from the rest of the world’s mistakes.

The blend of Maori, new immigrant and early settler populations had stark differences in how they lived and how they saw the future in the Bay of Islands and Far North. This difference became of interest to me and was a powerful influence in my work. I have a passion for nostalgia. The way things were, old baches, un-developed beachscapes and untouched landscapes.

I love to mix the traditional maori colours, black, brown, red, and white with the bright, pacific colours used by some Maori on the painted houses in small towns like Moerewa, Kawakawa, Kohukohu and Rawene.

Although my oars look purely decorative, they do tell a story, as a totum would, and for me show the impact of European settlers on the land. They often focus on the positive but with and under lying note of concern.

They are a vehicle for my environmental grievances, so I often focus on nostalgic images of New Zealand the way it was before development, as my form of protest. I also add Maori images and manipulate them, as a symbol of togetherness. I will fill a Tiki with roses or wrap a maori artifact in lace for example. I also mix lace with flax, teapots with traditional Maori tools and religious icons with spiritual objects from the land.

Brian Culy – Photographer

Born Wellington 1954, started work at the National Film Unit, then Vidcom Auckland as a video tape editor. Moved to Wellington to learn film editing subsequently started his own post production company. Like all editors thought he could do a better job than most of the directors he was working for, set up his own production company Airdate, which lasted for a successful 15 years. Semi retired in 2000 from the film industry to follow his long time passion for photography. With wife Leanne set up the art home-ware company – Home Base Collections. He is now working for a variety of clients and also produces and exhibits work of his own.

Contact us:

Phone: 06 8358735

info@homebasecollections.co.nz

5 Balquhidder Rd

Napier

Hawkes Bay