{"id":254816,"date":"2025-07-11T00:19:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/254816\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T00:19:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:19:14","slug":"a-sculptors-spectacularly-creative-farmhouse-in-mallorca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/254816\/","title":{"rendered":"A sculptor’s spectacularly creative farmhouse in Mallorca"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I first bought the land, the idea was to use it as a campsite \u2013 a place to bring the kids, sleep in tents and have fun in the summer,\u201d says Michael Prentice, an American sculptor and investor. Today, he speaks from his double-height living room<\/a>, which features, among other decorative flourishes, a ceiling modelled on the mud\u00e9jar designs found in the Royal Palace of La Almudaina in Palma. A tent it is not.<\/p>\n

The story from campsite to finca begins in the early 1980s, when Prentice\u2019s work was included in a show in the Grand Palais in Paris<\/a>. It was there he met the Austrian businessman-turned-sculptor Ben Jakober, who, together with his partner and fellow artist Yannick Vu, had built a house in Mallorca<\/a> with the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy in the 1970s (Jakober and Vu would later turn their house into an art<\/a> foundation, which is still open today). As it happened, Prentice had spent the last 10 years summering on Mallorca in a little hut, which, when he took on a long-term rental, had no electricity or water. But the lease had run out, and so, too, had his marriage. \u2018When I told my sob story to Jakober, he suggested I come and visit him,\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

Elliot Sheppard<\/p>\n

Jakober ended up persuading Prentice to buy a four-acre plot neighbouring his. \u201cThere was nothing here. It used to be a little farm, and all that was left was a half-crumbled wall, a pile of stones and a small barn,\u201d says Prentice. After a couple of summers, when it came to building something more comfortable than a tent, he decided the position of the barn would determine the front of a new house, reckoning that it would have been chosen carefully. \u201cSure enough, even though it’s a south eastern exposure, the air comes down the valley, cooling the front side of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the building of what would be a six-bedroom<\/a> home, comprised of a main house and a separate annexe, all set around terraces and landscaped grounds on a sloped site, Prentice called to his team of workmen he had employed in Paris, where his sculpture studio was based for 30 years. \u201cThey were strong, and were used to working with stone, so they came and learnt how to build a house. It was very much built in the spirit of, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s give it a go,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Elliot Sheppard<\/p>\n

Today, the house is approached via a long private drive that culminates in a gently winding path ascending to the front door. The path intersects two cultivated terraces \u2013 traditional to Mallorca \u2013 the upper one populated by dome-shaped topiary bushes, sheltered by a giant ancient olive tree, the lower flanked by a row of Cypress trees<\/a>, behind which an olive grove slopes towards the sea. The rest of the four acres are given to productive olive and citrus trees, as well as vegetable patches and a seawater pool with outdoor living space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen I first bought the land, the idea was to use it as a campsite \u2013 a place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[97932,4021,4020,4094,4022,77,97930,91012,97931,97933,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-254816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artists-at-home","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-country","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-european-houses","15":"tag-houses-belonging-to-interesting-people","16":"tag-houses-by-the-sea","17":"tag-modern-country","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114831737690665541","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}