Nanette Cameron moved to Pakuranga in the mid-1950s when she married. Her husband, Douglas, owned a few acres of land that sloped down to the water in what is now the Sunnyhills area, and they lived then (and continued to live for many decades) in the original share-milker’s cottage for the farm owned by Woolf Fisher. Douglas Cameron and Woolf Fisher shared a fascination with horses, and they were in contact socially. At the time, the few farms in the district were designated as a green belt for Auckland City and there were only about six houses in the immediate area. The house had a septic tank and no mail delivery – the family collected letters from a post-mistress’s home about twice a week. Access to the property was a rough country road called Hattaways Lane that later, when the farms were subdivided, became Glenmore Road.
Nanette Cameron gained her BHSc from the University of Otago and identified the interior design/architecture part of the course as her area of preference. However, opportunities were minimal in New Zealand at the time she graduated and she became a teacher at Takapuna Grammar for three years, before leaving for England intending to study further there. She found the available courses too expensive, however, and worked instead as a nanny, cook, supply teacher and in restaurants, in between her travels where she gained much design knowledge ‘by osmosis’ over a number of years. On returning to Auckland she found work as an interior designer in Hurdley’s on High Street in the city. At that time, the High Street/Vulcan Lane area was very lively and something of a style centre, with Brenner Associates, Flora McDonald’s Violet Gowns, Spencer Digby the photographer, John Crichton’s design store, John Greer’s imported shoe shop, Max Robinson’s lamp studio and the elegant Stilson’s Tea Rooms.
The Camerons commuted from Pakuranga for some years until their first child, Kirsty, arrived. When her children were babies, Nanette was asked to teach night classes in continental cooking at Tamaki College. After a year she resolved not to repeat the experience, but was persuaded instead to run a class in interior design. She found this enjoyable, ‘even the research’, and it suited her lifestyle as the mother of small children. Initially one evening a week, it steadily grew to several, alongside some consulting work with private clients. This was the start of her business. Cameron eventually moved what had become the Nanette Cameron School of Interior Design to the new Pakuranga Arts Centre, once it was built.
Her classes always enjoyed great demand and at one point she taught three a day. This exhausting schedule was reduced with some assistance through the 1990s but in the early 2000s Cameron still continued to teach classes several times a week, retiring formally only in 2016. The incorporation of the Nanette Cameron School of Interior Design within the mantle of the society and the Fisher Gallery was a key part of the unique convergence of personalities and events that made the Pakuranga Arts Society and its history a story of enduring success.
Many would say that without the school of design, the Fisher Gallery could well have foundered at times. Cameron herself said she was ‘pleased that it did allow the gallery to keep going’. The revenue from Cameron’s classes was foundational income for what was at first the Pakuranga Community and Cultural Centre and later the Fisher Gallery. It enabled the society to invest and plan, as in the early years students paid for the entire course at the beginning of the year. There were times when Cameron took just ‘a share’ of the proceeds from the class fees, due to pressure for funds from elsewhere in the organisation, but more appropriate arrangements were formalised later. She continued running the Nanette Cameron School of Interior Design until 2010, when it was taken over by Te Tuhi, and retired from teaching in 2015.
Beyond this practical contribution, many of her former students credit Cameron with ‘opening their eyes’ while developing their thinking ‘beyond the square’. A vast cross-section of the community has reason to be grateful to her, as she passed on a passion for art and design and made many people, who otherwise might not have, appreciate and understand better their environment in the broadest sense. Her teachings enriched lives immeasurably.
Nanette Cameron was at the first meeting of the emerging society, at Iris Fisher’s home in 1969, and remained on the committee until some years after the Fisher Gallery opened in 1984. She was then made an honorary member of the society. Nanette Cameron died in 2023.
Watch: The Single Object: Wallace Chapman & Nanette Cameron (2019)
Press
→ Architecture Now – Obituary: Nanette Cameron
→ 95bfm – Remembering Nanette Cameron with Philip Clarke
→ Architecture Now – Vale: Nanette Cameron
→ The Big Idea – Loss of a Legend - Nanette Cameron Remembered
→ Architecture Now – 'Passion and curiosity': 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award, Nanette Cameron
→ Architecture Now – Nanette Cameron to retire
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