In residence Lisa's kitchen bench and Danish Bar Stools

Lisa’s Erskineville Home

April 17, 2026 |Toni Briggs-Brown

A house made for belonging

House Two in TH Brown’s In Residence series

Lisa and Toni sitting talking about TH Brown

At TH Brown, we believe the best homes are not simply styled they are lived in. They gather memory, meaning and character over time. That idea sits at the heart of In Residence, our journal series exploring the homes, lives and stories that unfold around our pieces.

For House Two, we step inside Lisa’s home in Erskineville, on Gadigal Country.

From the moment Lisa begins to show you around, it is clear this is not a house shaped by trend. It is a home shaped by belonging to place, to history, to community and to the life being lived inside it. Lisa speaks about Erskineville not simply as a suburb, but as home ground, layered with working-class history, migration, memory and care. That sense of continuity runs through the house itself.

Built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, it was one of the first homes on the estate, back when the land still held orchards, gardens and animals. Over time, the area shifted from farmland to industry, and then to the dense inner-city neighbourhood it is now. Lisa sees the house not as an isolated object, but as part of a much longer story of land, labour and belonging.

That may be why the things inside the home feel so naturally chosen.

Lisa is drawn to mid-century Australian furniture because it is light, practical, repairable and made to endure. “It’s light,” she says. “It’s not too much of a commitment. You can move the room around on your own and make it something else.” That philosophy explains why TH Brown sits so naturally here. Early in the walk-through, Toni notices the mix of original vintage Australian pieces and TH Brown designs already in the room. Lisa’s response is immediate: “And those two, of course, are yours.” It is a small moment, but a telling one. The TH Brown Danish Bar Stools do not interrupt the home’s language they continue it. In a house built around Australian design, practicality and pieces made to last, they feel entirely at ease.

Lisa and her husband moved in in 2011 and have been renovating ever since. But this has never been renovation for show. It has been thoughtful, practical and long-term: opening spaces to light and air, future-proofing the house where they can, and making it somewhere they hope to stay for the rest of their lives. “We really want this to be the house that we live in to die,” Lisa says. It is a direct line, but a deeply moving one. This is not a project. It is a commitment. Even the old warehouse beam running through the room has been left in place because, as Lisa says, they liked it as “this big huge tree in the middle of the room.”

Outside, the jacaranda is heritage listed, expensive to protect and gloriously messy. Lisa tells the local story that mothers from Crown Street may once have been given jacarandas when they had babies, and wonders whose child this tree might mark. Then, just as quickly, she talks about the flowers, the leaves and the gutters. That balance affection without sentimentality feels very true to the house. Beauty matters here, but it lives alongside practicality.

That same instinct runs through Lisa’s life beyond the home. She helped co-found a scholarship programme supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical students, first funded through art auctions and later through donations, helping ensure others could continue their studies with support she herself once struggled to find. That gives the Indigenous art in the home particular depth. These works are not simply beautiful. They are tied to advocacy, education and opportunity. Alongside them sits Lisa’s own printmaking practice slow, experimental and handmade developed through her studio work and her time at Baldessin Studio in regional Victoria. In this house, art is not decoration. It is part of how she lives.

And for all its depth, the house is never solemn. There is a beloved dog with a bed in every room, a kitchen built for feeding many, a B&B tucked into one part of the property, and the practical humour of a house Lisa describes as “a bit like a TARDIS.”

It is not simply beautifully renovated or thoughtfully furnished. It is a home where history, creativity, practicality and belonging all meet and where TH Brown pieces sit naturally within a life shaped slowly, with care.