WHO: Ceramic artist Eva Gordon (www.evagordondesign.com) and her husband Michael.
WHAT: 100-year-old house in lilac-laden Moore Park.
THE STORY: Once the managerial house for Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Gordon’s abode is part of Toronto’s most impressive arboretum. “This year I’m nuts about the trees,” she says, pointing to the chestnut variety in her backyard. “The colours of the leaves are unreal.”
Colour also prevails inside her home, where vases overflow with large bloomed flowers (“Anything I look at dies,” she admits, “so I spend lots of time buying flowers rather than gardening”) and where tones reminiscent of fruits found in a marketplace in Hungary — Gordon’s homeland — coat the walls. A blueberry kitchen is neatly contrasted with subdued black-and-white photos, creamy French provincial furniture and the odd raw ceramic in the works.
Her finished pieces on the other hand, are found in astounding numbers out back in the coach house, where she works on hobby projects when not at her studio in Caledon. The building reflects Gordon’s approach to colour and traditional style: her three-dimensional sculptures of onions, peas, apples, asparagus and all manner of produce line the mint-hued cabinets and window ledges.
Despite all of the vibrancy, Gordon, who is also an accomplished architect, says that it’s the workmanship seen in the house’s foundation that she’s most proud of. “I measured the house when we moved in” she says, “Every wall to the inch is one on top of the other. It’s a completely perfect line.”