Orit Freilich is 54, a lecturer in fashion design at Shenkar. She lives in the Kfar Ganim neighborhood of Petah Tikva with her husband and 19 year old son (her two grown daughters have moved out). On the fourth and top floor, six rooms on two levels, in 200sqm

 

Orit Freilich doesn't allow her students to use the word 'eclectic.' "It's an easily used term that's meaningless.  It's like saying something is different or nice" she says, in an attempt to define the character of the home in which she resides and of the objects scattered around it. "This home is a mixture so the best word to describe it is hybridization. Everything is old and new, there are a lot of things that were given me as gifts, and on principle I don't exchange things that were given me.  If someone chose, picked and gave it, even if it is not my taste at all, on my life I won't return it," she laughs.  "Its sentimentality and even kitchiness in some way, but each thing reminds me of the person who gave it, what and why. It's also the reason we continued living here.  We moved here in 1987, after six years in Denmark, after I finished my fashion studies at the Scandinavian Academy of Fashion Design in Copenhagen. Around it was all orchards and the house was the last one built 'on the edge of nothing'. Over the years we made friends, the kids grew up; all the family memories are here.”

 

The living room, which is at the entrance to the house and from which one continues to the other parts of the house, contains a mix of odd and intriguing objects, furniture and decorative items, holy books which are a witness to the observant religious background from which Freilich is, Danish furniture, light fixtures and works of art by Freilich—some of which were shown at last year at Periscope Gallery in Tel Aviv. On the living room table a mixture of coconut fruit from the Maldives, orchids, books on fashion and design; and next to this a model light fixture made of glass fibers, a leather trunk on wooden legs from South Africa converted into a sofa , a piano,  three replicas of colorful plastic chairs designed by Verner Panton and more. "Panton is my master. He's a genius. He dared to go to the edge with his limitless vision—in terms of color, materials, space, everything. I call that guts."

 

"At home, the connection of everything together turns all that you see into mine. Destiny brought me to Copenhagen, and as much as I thought it was the worst thing that could happen to me- it was the greatest gift I could have had. It's my personal blend-- I'm Israeli, also religious, and have also seen the outside world. All the sentimentality bubbling up in me turns me into what I am and my home into what it is — for better or for worse."