A COLOURFUL LIFE

Design duo Bonnie and Neil have turned their creative hands to their own home with the same exuberance and passion they bestow on all their projects.

- Victoria Carey

There’s a storm brewing high above her home. Lightning strikes and a neighbour’s tree comes crashing to the ground. It’s wild out there. Our Zoom call flickers and threatens to disconnect. Bonnie Ashley looks around the room and breathes a sigh of relief. She’s safely inside the 1940s four-bedroom house in Melbourne that she shares with her husband, Neil Downie. It’s also a Friday, a day the 45-year-old usually works from home, and the weekend is stretching ahead of her.

“I tend to end the week working from home, which is lovely. I lock myself away and do a lot of my designing in one of the rooms upstairs,” she says. “It looks onto the back garden and is a nice spot to work.”

A keen cook, Bonnie reveals her plan to get up early the next morning to go to a farmers market. Textile designer, artist, florist and gardener… there seems to be little this talented creative cannot turn her hand to. The desire to make things is the common thread underpinning them all and, luckily for us, it’s this passion that led Bonnie and Neil to launch their homewares brand in 2010.