Sukhita brings new ideas to The Langford Store
Sukhita Langford brings diverse café, sculpture and design experiences to Bainham. Photo: Will Hutchison.
The very name The Langford Store conjures up an image of unchanging retail timelessness. So breathing new life into that business without altering the historical fabric was always going to be the challenge for 37-year-old Sukhita Langford after she took it over last May.
A remarkably diverse working career has helped inspire things along. Her incredible attention to detail, which has meticulously preserved the authentic layout of stock and signage around the shop, was honed on film set work. Her plans for an artist's gallery in the adjacent storeroom, along with a sculpture garden next door, come from years spent as a working sculpture artist. That smell of espresso wafting out of the Faema coffee machine in the rebuilt kitchen comes with over four years' experience managing Wellington cafés.
Says Sukhita: "I've come here with a lot of enthusiasm because I need to make this work. Some people pull over just to take a photo, so getting them to stop here awhile is going to be the key."
The shop and post office was built in 1928 by George Polglase and Basil Miller for Edward Langford at a cost of £148 6s. The first makeshift post office, across the road, was shifted over to become the storeroom. Lorna Langford ran the store from 1947 to 2008, and then offered it to Sukhita, her uncle's granddaughter, to keep it in the Langford family. "It came at a perfect time," explains Sukhita. "If I'd been asked a year earlier it wouldn't have worked for me."
Sukhita grew up in Dunedin before shifting with her parents and two siblings to the UK at the age of nine, but they returned to live in Wellington when she was 13. After leaving school she worked for the Unemployed Workers Union, mainly writing, before setting her sights on becoming a leading sculpture artist. She showed her first clay and copper bronze castings in Wellington then went big in Auckland where her Better Than a Straight Line exhibition was well received. Then a close friend gave her a gift of a one-way ticket to London via India, where she spent nine months doing yoga and studying the local sculpture. For the next two-and-a-half years she earned her living in London as a life model for artists and schools before coming back to live in Wellington in 1995.
"I fell in love with New Zealand all over again," she recalls. "This time I opted for hospitality as a job." She spent four-and-a-half years managing Bar Bodega before slipping into the film industry, finding her niche as an armour and weapons technician for Weta Workshop on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. After working on The Last Samurai she switched to TV art work on Insider's Guide to Happiness, Insider's Guide to Love other productions.
A yearning to get back into her art nearly saw Sukhita move to Taranaki, but the day she decided to leave the city, Lorna rang and offered her the shop. "I'd long romanticised about preserving the store and all its history, not to mention putting in a gallery there," says Sukhita, "And Lorna thought I had the go and creativity to take it on as her successor. "
Suhkita's supportive partner is Will Hutchison, who many will know through his Photoshop night classes at Collingwood and Takaka. He's also a talented baker. His aim, along with scones to go with the coffee and tea served in bone china, is to come up with the ultimate chocolate cake that people will drive miles to get.
Says Sukhita: "I was already looking to leave the city to get away from the chaotic pace of consumerism. A lot of my enthusiasm and happiness here is because I've chosen to live in a small, caring and involved community.
"The store is very much about that community and I'm hoping to expand on that with the gallery and sculpture garden showing local artists."
Gerard Hindmarsh
Sukhita says that, after her first exciting six months at the store, she is further ahead with new developments than she expected to be. "It's been fantastic," she said. "The coffee's flowing from the new coffee machine and the cakes are going well too. The walls of the art gallery went up last week. That's just a dream come true. I didn't expect to be this far ahead."
Sukhita is grateful for the the continued support for the store. "I've had fantastic support from the people at Bainham and the rest of the Bay as well."
