A final glimpse at a few of the pieces that will be available in the upcoming Vintage and Antique Collection release, along with a preview of some new pieces coming soon.

To gain access to the collection once it is released, be sure to sign up for the Ellei Home Mailing List.

Hand Painted Vintage Mexican 'Loteria' Cards, Vintage Decorative Framed Mirror, Vintage Metal Dried Flower Vase, and Vintage Small Green Alabaster Trinket Pedestal all available in the upcoming Vintage Collection Release. 

 Almost anyone who visits Mexico City will recognise Casa Azul, the bright cobalt-blue house in the quietly vibrant and deeply atmospheric neighbourhood of Coyoacán. Once the family home of artist Frida Kahlo, it is now a pilgrimage site for school groups, young couples, art lovers, and admirers from around the world paying homage to the icon.

However, further along, past the leafy expanse of Viveros de Coyoacán, in the tranquil, cobblestoned neighbourhood of San Ángel, lies a lesser-known and more intimate destination for art lovers and Kahlo admirers alike. Here you can find the former shared home and studio of Kahlo and her husband, artist Diego Rivera, known as Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo.

Although Kahlo spent most of her life in Casa Azul, from 1934 until their divorce in 1939, she and Rivera lived and worked in this modernist complex, which has since become one of Mexico City’s architectural and cultural treasures.

   

The kitchen in Frida Kahlo's house at the Casa Estudio complex.

Details in the now bare rooms at Kahlo's house. 

 The bathroom that served as inspiration for the painting What the Water Gave Me. 

 

By far the larger of the two houses was Rivera’s. In contrast to Kahlo’s now bare rooms, many of Rivera’s possessions and artefacts remained following his death. The largest space, accessed by a spiral staircase, was his studio, where he welcomed guests and created, exhibited, and sold some of his work. Not only does the studio still hold traces of Rivera’s artistic life—his easels, palettes, brushes, and paints still sit before the large industrial windows—but it also houses a striking display of his spirited Mexican folk art collection. From the vibrant and convivial Judas figures—towering papier-mâché sculptures representing demons, skeletons, and characters from Mexican folklore—to functional clay vessels, handmade toys, and clay animal figurines, Rivera’s collection animates the functionalist space with a sense of joyfulness and cultural identity.

 

Diego Rivera's collection of the folk art papier-mâché figures known as Judas.

 Diego Rivera's studio at Casa Estudio with a portrait he painted of Dolores del Rio.

Alongside his studio, Rivera’s home includes a modest bedroom and bathroom, a small living room, and an upper-floor office opening onto a terrace. From here, the rooftop bridge links back to Kahlo’s studio through an impossible external floating staircase that would have been particularly challenging for Kahlo, given her injuries resulting from a trolley accident in her youth. The terrace also offers a view of one of the site’s most charming features: its living fence. Instead of a conventional wall, the architect O’Gorman used a border of tall cactus plants—at the time a controversial architectural gesture in a neighbourhood dominated by European colonial style.

  Diego Rivera's modest bedroom at Casa Estudio.

 Diego Rivera's office (above), with further examples of his folk art collection, and the Casa Estudio roof terraces (below), with the bridge that connects the two houses.

 

While the time the couple spent together at Casa Estudio was marked by artistic productivity, it was also marked by marital turbulence and personal pain, ultimately resulting in their separation and divorce in 1939. Kahlo returned to Casa Azul, and although she later reconciled with Rivera, she never moved back to Casa Estudio, preferring to live in her childhood home, where she remained until her death in 1954. Rivera, meanwhile, continued living and working at Casa Estudio until his death in 1957.

Today, Casa Estudio endures not only as a house museum and bold architectural landmark, but also as a powerful memento of the couple's complex, turbulent and unconventional relationship.

What I am most excited to share is a small selection of Moroccan Amazigh (Berber) rugs, sourced from the Amazigh heartland. Each rug is a vintage, one-of-a-kind, handwoven work of art, designed and crafted by Amazigh women in Morocco. Below, you can explore these remarkable rugs alongside a curated assortment of vintage and antique treasures from around the world.

To gain first access when the collection is released, be sure to sign up to the Ellei Home mailing list.

Geography as Design Language

Amazigh carpets are inseparable from place. Morocco’s varied geography, from the snow-capped Atlas Mountains to arid plains and desert edges, has given rise to distinct weaving traditions shaped by their unique climate, resources, and lifestyles. Each region, and often each tribe, has cultivated a signature weaving language:

Beni Ouarain (Middle Atlas) – Calm, Quiet, Tactile 

Originating from a confederation of Amazigh tribes in the Middle Atlas, the historically pastoral communities with large flocks of sheep known as the Beni Ouarain created some of the most iconic Moroccan rural carpets — large, ivory-ground thick-pile rugs with geometric motifs that later became celebrated in Western modernist interiors. Perhaps the most recognisable from a ‘global interiors’ perspective, Beni Ouarain rugs are known for their lustrous, luminous ivory wool contrasting with bold geometric black or brown motifs.

Situated in the mountain climates, the dense, thick pile of Beni Ouarain rugs, typically loosely knotted using traditional ‘Berber knots’, reflects a functional adaptation to geography. These rugs served as protection from the elements and were frequently used both pile-side up and pile-side down, depending on the season.

While Beni Ouarain designs are calm, grounded, and restrained, much of the appeal of these widely-adored rugs comes from the material itself; the lustrous hand-spun wool with high amounts of natural lanolin often results in a soft glow that creates variation across the rug’s surface as the eye drifts across it. High lanolin content in the wool also allows it to age gracefully, resulting in a warm patina that only becomes more appealing over time.

While the weaving often features pleasing lozenge grids and geometric forms, much of the Beni Ouarain’s design interest comes from the weavers’ use of texture: the use of thick pile in varying lengths or textural techniques such as half-relief, with motifs knotted in shorter dark wool among longer white pile to create a hidden, diffuse pattern. Another example of the use of texture in Beni Ouarain weaving is the Hanbel or loop carpet created using a looped knotting technique, where the pile is knotted in small loops that remain uncut, creating a particularly soft surface that emphasises tactility through subtle surface variation.  

Azilal and the High Atlas Region – Playful, Spontaneous, Painterly 

The Amazigh weavers of the High Atlas regions were comparatively less prolific in carpet weaving compared to their neighbours in the Beni Ouarain confederation. The Beni Ourain lived in cooler, higher altitude areas, experiencing the necessity for thick pile rugs as essential insulation. This functional demand fuelled continuous production and ultimately resulted in a strong weaving tradition. The High Atlas region, while still mountainous, is less cold and more varied in climate, with the need for heavy pile rugs being less constant. High Atlas communities had fewer sheep per household and therefore less access to abundant wool. However, where weaving did flourish, as in Azilal, carpets emerged with an expressive and exuberant weaving style. Unlike the monochrome weaving style of the Beni Ouarain, Azilal weavers also made use of bright colours, using not only wool but recycled industrial yarn, often obtained from clothing remnants.

In Azilal weavings, colour often explodes across borderless white ground in irregular compositions that feel spontaneous, celebratory and highly modern to the Western eye. They frequently feature abrupt colour changes, floating symbols, unexpected pops of colour and asymmetrical motifs. The result is work that feels highly personal, emotionally direct, and joyful, as though the weaver were playing on the rug’s surface using colour and form.

Boujad – Warm, Emotional, Dreamlike

In the plains around Marrakech, Boujad is known for carpets that typically feature warm, saturated palettes and complex layering of motifs. Reds, pinks, purples, and burnt oranges dominate within the intimate yet charged compositions of the carpets. Vintage Boujad rugs were typically dyed using local plants and minerals, and because of the natural dye, their abrash ground fades and ages beautifully. With intentionally unbalanced compositions and repeated motifs that mutate across the field, the tension between structure and collapse often reveals a deep, intuitive understanding of balance and composition, achieved through years of embodied practice.

Weaving at home.

Boucherouite – Electric, Joyful, Chaotic

Boucherouite rugs, vibrant constructions made from strips of recycled cloth and fibre, emerged in rural Amazigh communities across the Atlas Mountains and surrounding plains from the 1960s onwards. Best understood as a material-driven form of innovation that emerged as a practical response to scarcity in regions where shepherding declined and textile markets grew, Boucherouite, which roughly translates to ‘made of scraps’, are a lovely example of the living nature of the Moroccan Amazigh weaving tradition. Where wool became scarce, and textile remnants from clothing fragments, factory offcuts and discarded industrial yarn became readily available, the Amazigh women began incorporating these colourful scraps into their wool rugs or making rugs entirely out of these recycled textiles. While Boucherouite rugs now have an established place within the Amazigh weaving tradition, their origins lie firmly in necessity—often the most sincere form of sustainability. Creating vibrant, tactile surfaces celebrated for their bold abstraction, expressive freedom and sustainability, Boucheroutie rugs push against the edges of conventional ideas of value.  

Boucherouite rugs are freer in form and composition, decoupled from more established regional idioms. Often highly expressive, colourful, and visually dynamic, their irregular, abstract patterns can resist simple interpretation, embodying a creative vitality that reflects cultural adaptation rather than fragmentation.

While some external observers might see Boucherouite as a departure from tradition, Gebhart Balzek of Berber Arts  and related scholars interpret them as an expansion of cultural language. They reflect adaptation to material scarcity, socio-cultural change, and ongoing creative expression. These rag rugs are recognised not as anomalies, but as a continuation of Moroccan textile culture using contemporary means — a testament to resilience, improvisation, and cultural adaptability.

While I have mentioned just a few of the many different regional styles of Amazigh Carpets, you can discover the diversity in expression and more of the regional variation in the visual archive of Nathan Ursch and Bin Reinhardt of Beuckelen Berber.

A Living Tradition – Amazigh Carpets Past and Present

While my focus is primarily on vintage rugs, I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that Amazigh carpet weaving is not just a relic of the past. It is and always has been a living, evolving practice shaped by migration (including the functional demands and realities of geography and material availability), economic change (including the shift from primarily domestic to commercial value), and individual expression shaped by the preferences, life experiences, hopes and creativity of individual weavers.

Today, Moroccan carpets occupy a complex position within the global interiors culture. They are celebrated for their versatility, equally at home in minimalist spaces and richly layered homes. Designers prize their ability to soften architecture, add warmth, and introduce narrative. But I feel that this popularity also carries a responsibility.

Western demand is transforming production systems. When markets demand standard sizes, particular colour palettes, or Western-friendly motifs, weavers often adapt, producing items that satisfy external tastes rather than local intuition. This market-induced shift can undermine local cultural expression and alter how weaving is practised: the craft becomes oriented toward marketability rather than individual expression and continuity of tradition. Industry analysts and thoughtful commentaries document these shifts, noting how commercialisation can generate both economic opportunities and cultural distortion.

A challenge that the weavers of today face is how to preserve the skill, tradition and the value within artistic expression of their unique vision, while accommodating the demands of modern market forces and the influence of the aesthetic preferences of the patrons whose finances their livelihoods depend on.

To collect or to live with Amazigh carpets thoughtfully is to be aware of and to acknowledge their origins and the labour behind them, as well as the unique artistic spirit and expression of the weavers who brought them into being through hours of labour and their unique vision. These textiles are not just objects, but living legacies of regional, domestic, and creative practices as well as individual artistic expressions. Woven by women, shaped by geography, and continually reinterpreted in changing cultural landscapes, they are an embodiment of resilience and freedom of spirit in an ever-changing world.  

With acknowledgement and deep gratitude to the weavers who patiently answered my questions and encouraged me to learn about their craft through my own embodied experience. I am so deeply grateful to my guide, driver, and translator Zakaria, without whom this learning experience would not have been possible. Finally, I want to credit the following sources with helping to train my eye to the richness and diversity of high-quality vintage Moroccan rugs and for helping to form my understanding of this complex cultural expression:

The rich and deep contribution of Gebhart Balzek of Berber Arts.

The Visual Archive of Nathan Ursch and Bin Reinhardt of Beuckelen Berber.

Myriem N. Naji - Weaving and the Value of carpets: female invisible labour and male marketing in southern Morocco. Her thesis makes a contribution to feminist anthropology by documenting how women’s labour in domestic craft, despite being central to cultural heritage, often remains economically invisible and socially unrecognised in patriarchal market structures.

Women, Work, and the Unseen Economy

In rural Morocco, carpet weaving is traditionally women’s domain, an inherited skill passed from one generation to the next, learned at the loom from childhood through embodied practices, and imbued with cultural, gendered significance and generational knowledge. It is women’s responsibility to incorporate weaving into their domestic tasks, and their labour mostly remains invisible. While their bodies and spirits create some of the most expressive textiles in the world, their labour historically often remained obscured from the outside world. For generations, the creative labour of Amazigh women remained largely unacknowledged beyond their communities. As global interest in Moroccan carpets grew during the twentieth century, their textiles began to circulate more widely, but recognition of the individuals who produced them remained elusive.

The weavers themselves were frequently rendered invisible. The carpets were and often still are presented as anonymous artefacts. The complexity of women’s lives, the hours of labour, their technical mastery, symbolic knowledge, and creative and expressive decision-making, remained invisible and unacknowledged. While some of this is begging to change, as interest in craft production from outsiders grows, historically, their skill and creativity were obscured by rug dealers, collectors and museums, frequently presenting and handling the rugs as artefacts detached from the women who produced them.

My understanding of this subject is based on the work of Myriem N. Naji. Her thesis: Weaving and the Value of carpets: female invisible labour and male marketing in southern Morocco makes a contribution to feminist anthropology by documenting how women’s labour in domestic craft, despite being central to cultural heritage, often remains economically invisible and socially unrecognised in patriarchal market structures.

Yet weaving has also been a site of agency for women. Through pattern and colour, women encoded personal experiences, emotions, wishes, and spirituality into their work. A carpet might quietly reference fertility, protection, loss, or joy. It could mark transitions such as marriage or migration, or simply serve as a space for experimentation and play. In this sense, Moroccan carpets function as intimate visual languages, legible first and foremost to the women who made them.

It is important to remember that what we admire as design is, in reality, a complex choreography of symbolism, technique, personal expression and embodied knowledge. The rugs cannot be separated from the women who create them, and for me, it is important to keep these women at the forefront of my awareness when admiring the rugs.  

Warm and welcoming Dihya, demonstrating the 'Berber' knot weaving technique and how to use the tazekka comb.

Time, Irreproducibility and the Uniqueness of Hand-Making

Weaving a carpet is a slow act. Depending on the size and the complexity of the piece, a single rug can take several months to complete. The slow rhythm of weaving between daily tasks is integral to the iterative creation process of Amazigh carpets and stands in stark contrast to the speed of contemporary consumption. Something that I deeply value about vintage Amazigh rugs is their irreproducibility. It stands in defiant opposition to the replicability of modern interior trends. To live with a vintage Moroccan carpet is to live with a unique object, unlike others produced before it or since. To fall in love with an image of an interior with an Amazigh carpet is to accept using it as a source of inspiration only. Each vintage rug is its own unique creation, and while we can search for similar colours, patterns or textures, we must accept that we will not find that exact rug again.

An Amazigh weaver from a small village near Beni Mellal, who requested not to have her face shown in the images of her weaving a commission rug. Notice the traditional Amazigh symbols tattooed on her wrists. These archaic symbols decorate the hands and faces as well as the weavings of Amazigh women.

Pattern, Symbol, and Meaning

Until recently, Moroccan carpet designs were rarely based on drawn patterns or fixed templates. Instead, motifs emerged out of improvisation, memory, and embodied knowledge. Symbols were repeated, adapted, and reinterpreted across regions and generations. Common motifs include lozenges or diamonds, checkerboards, chevrons, zigzags, and X-shapes. While some of these symbols are typically linked to meanings associated with femininity, protection, fertility, spiritual safeguarding or the natural world, it is important to note that their meanings were rarely literal. Rather, meanings shifted depending on context, combination, and the individual weaver’s intention.

Importantly, a lot of the symbolism was not conscious or explicit. Motifs persisted because they had always been woven, passed down from one generation to the next. When asked about their design choices, weavers would tell me that they weave what they know, what they see and what they feel and cannot express exactly what it means. The potency of the symbols lies in continuity rather than explanation; they are an expressive, untamed visual language of intuition rather than structure. Amazigh carpets resist straightforward decoding; they ask to be experienced rather than understood.

Carpets being washed on the roof of a local cooperative. 

Disorder as Freedom

Amazigh carpets contain a freedom and a kind of intentional chaos within their designs. Their unpredictability and lack of structure are not disorder, let alone error, but rather a deliberate freedom of spirit in composition. Vintage Amazigh carpets do not conform to rigid, repetitive rules the way industrial textiles do; their motifs shift in unexpected ways, their borders are often asymmetrical, and their colour zones can be surprising. Much like folk art that comes from memory and imagination rather than pattern books, Amazigh rugs are created from a sense of intuition rather than instruction. 

Vintage Amazigh rugs feel alive because they were not conceived as ‘perfected’ objects for sale within an optimised market. Instead, they were born out of acts of deeply individual expression rooted in a tradition of embodied learning. Their sense of vitality comes from a craft permeated with cultural and personal symbolism expressed through irregular patterns, intuitive dynamic changes, and distinct freedom from rigid rules imposed by external loci of control.

Their designs do not resolve tension or aim for perfect harmony. Instead, they embrace imbalance, complexity, and dynamic tension. In a world increasingly dominated by optimisation, these rugs act as a counter-spell, introducing friction, unpredictability, and resistance in a way that feels both exciting and deeply comforting.

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This article was written based on learnings from a month-long sabbatical trip around the Amazigh heartlands of Morocco. The aim of my trip was to try to situate the vintage Amazigh rugs I had grown to love within their cultural, historical, and social contexts. I wanted to understand their significance, beyond their aesthetic appeal, to be able to bring to life the work of the women who made them and the structures that hold and shape their lives. To bring into view the weavers behind the rugs, and the living cultures that produce this extraordinary cultural expression, is not only to credit and honour the makers, but to enrich our own appreciation. I believe that by attending to practice and process, not just design and aesthetics, we can begin to deepen our appreciation of Moroccan carpets and to understand them not just as decorative artefacts but as cultural practices emerging out of the embodied labour of women creating from within rich social worlds.

I have shared a slightly more personal reflection on the learnings from my sabbatical through my mailing list. If you would like to receive these more personal writings in future, please sign up to the Ellei Home mailing list. Incidentally, the mailing list is also where the latest collection of vintage Amazigh rugs for sale will always be released first.

A note on my terminology:

The Amazigh (or Imazighen) are the earliest known and continuous inhabitants of Morocco. While the carpets they create are often known as Moroccan Berber rugs (or Moroccan tribal rugs), the word ‘Berber’ is an exonym – that is to say, a name given by outsiders. While in use for several centuries, the people I encountered and learned from mostly referred to themselves as Amazigh, meaning ‘free people’.

The term ‘Moroccan rug’, while not incorrect, refers to any carpet originating from Morocco. Morocco has a vast weaving tradition that extends beyond the Amazigh people. And as the weaving traditions of the Amazigh people and the Arab population (who also have a vast and rich weaving tradition) are quite distinct, I prefer to use ‘Amazigh’ or ‘Moroccan Amazigh’ weaving to distinguish between these carpets and the carpets of Moroccan Arab culture. 

Morocco’s Amazigh carpets, often referred to as Berber rugs, hold a unique place in the world of handmade textiles. Expertly crafted and visually complex, they carry stories that span centuries, traverse diverse landscapes, and are the work of generations of Amazigh women whose creativity has shaped Morocco’s material culture as well as Western aesthetic sensibilities.

To truly appreciate Amazigh weaving is to look deeper than the surface beauty of the rugs. Vintage rugs are more than mere decorative objects crafted for modern markets. They are expressions of identity, personal creativity, and an enduring visual language—woven slowly and often behind closed doors within the domestic sphere. Each carpet is a conversation between tradition and innovation, utility and aesthetics, personal expression and collective knowledge.

The textiles section of the Fes el Bali, the oldest medina quarter of the city of Fez.

Tucked discreetly away at the end of a narrow lane in central Colombo, just out of reach of the city’s Main street and high-rise hotels, hides one of Asia’s most quietly influential houses, architect Geoffrey Bawa’s personal residence and city home-office, known as Number 11. To step into this home is to step into the embodiment of a design philosophy known as tropical modernism, which reimagined what it means to dwell in the tropics, to live between nature and modernity, and between the local and the global.

Tropical modernism emerged in the mid-20th century as an accommodation of European modernism to the climatic, cultural, and material realities of the tropics. The architectural movement sought to reconcile the clean geometry and open planning of modernist design with the heat, humidity, and monsoon rhythms of regions such as South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Early experiments by colonial architects within these regions treated climate as an obstacle to be overcome. But following the major wave of decolonisation and colonial independence throughout the 1940s, 1950s and ’60s, a new generation of local architects reinterpreted modernism as a language of cultural autonomy. 

In Sri Lanka, Geoffrey Bawa became its most lyrical exponent, developing a new modern architecture that was inseparable from landscape, weather, and local craftsmanship. His buildings, including Number 11 in Colombo, embody the principles of the movement: sensitivity to climate, a deep respect for local craft and materials, abundant use of courtyards and gardens for ventilation and repose, and a seamless blending of the indoors with the outdoors.

Socially, tropical modernism emerged within a complex post-colonial moment. Bawa, who was both educated and affluent, belonged to the Westernised social class with access to both resources and commissions that most of Sri Lanka’s citizens did not have. Using these privileges, he began to redefine modernity in non-Western terms, suggesting that progress could emerge from indigenous forms rather than only from imported styles. The resulting architecture was at once cosmopolitan and local.

In Bawa’s hands, the philosophy became not just aesthetic but embodied. The buildings he designed unfolded as journeys through light and shadow, dissolving walls between architecture and landscape, intellect and emotion. While often commissioned by governments and large commercial enterprises such as hotel groups, it was his work for wealthy, like-minded individuals that created the fertile soil for Bawa to explore and experiment with what would become some of the movement’s core principles. Sensibilities that today might be understood through the lens of sustainability and ecological design, such as natural ventilation, passive cooling, and the use of local materials, were tested and refined through architectural experimentation on the canvas that wealthy patrons, many of whom were Bawa’s friends, provided. Contemporary architects across the tropics continue to draw from these lessons, blending vernacular wisdom with modern technique to create buildings that breathe, age, and blend in. Ultimately, tropical modernism became less a style than a sensibility. It asked how buildings might respond to their environment rather than resist it, and how they might serve modern life without severing cultural roots.

Bawa was born in 1919 in Galle, on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, into a well-off, mixed-heritage family. His father, a wealthy lawyer of Arab descent, and his mother, from a prominent Dutch-Burgher lineage, placed him among the island’s well-off, Western-educated class. The Burgher community, descended from European settlers, occupied a distinctive social stratum in colonial Ceylon — culturally hybrid, English-speaking, and often closer to British customs than to indigenous life.

Educated at Royal College in Colombo and later at Cambridge University, Bawa’s early years unfolded within this milieu of privilege and cosmopolitanism. He studied law, travelled widely in Europe, and moved in circles that few Sri Lankans of the time had access to. This access to a sense of worldliness would not only inform his architectural sensitivity but also ease his path to securing his place in architectural history beyond Sri Lanka and South Asia. 

When Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948, it faced the challenge of defining its own modern identity. For Bawa, who returned home from Europe this same year and pivoted from law to architecture not long after, this meant a cultural reorientation and the beginning of the development of a contemporary aesthetic that could belong to his island and yet remain conversant with international art and design. In 1957,  after qualifying as an architect at the age of 38, his work soon began to articulate this ambition. He learned to fuse modern spatial clarity with the textures of vernacular building that included lime-washed walls, clay tile roofs, courtyards, water, greenery and shade. This synthesis became known as tropical modernism: an architecture neither purely colonial nor doctrinally modernist, but something distinctly of its place.

The house at number 11 began as a single two-story terrace house, which Bawa rented in 1959. Over time, he purchased not only number 11 but, slowly acquired the three adjacent properties as well, gradually merging them into a single, interlocking composition. Rather than demolishing and rebuilding, Bawa’s method was incremental. He worked with what existed, opening courtyards where there had been walls, piercing light shafts through ceilings, replacing opaque barriers with timber lattice or glass. The resulting house was not a single, uniform entity but an assemblage — a collage of interconnected spaces that grew organically with the architect’s life.

Bawa’s approach was one of quiet refinement. The luxury of Number 11 lies not in size or opulence but in its spatial intelligence — in how the house modulates light, air, and movement. Every threshold in the house seems to recalibrate the senses. Narrow corridors open into bright courtyards; low ceilings release into double-height voids. Light filters through foliage and latticed timber screens, creating moving patterns on white walls. The architecture leads gently, not with spectacle but with the rhythm of discovery.

Within the house, each room carries traces of its owner’s life. Bawa was a collector of furniture, books, art, and objects that reflected his wide travels and privileged education. Number 11 is not only a self-portrait in architecture but also a diary in objects; Bawa’s rooms are filled with artefacts collected across his life — a map of Ceylon, a door painted by Australian artist and friend Donald Friend; a stone Buddha from Anuradhapura; brass oil lamps from Jaffna; woven textiles by his close friend and collaborator Barbara Sansoni. This eclecticism reflects Bawa’s hybrid identity — European in education, Sri Lankan in sensibility. His interiors capture the condition of a generation caught between empire and independence, between the aspirations of Western modernism and the rediscovery of indigenous beauty. For all its serenity, Number 11 also reflects this duality. It is the home of a man deeply embedded in class privilege, yet enamoured with the vernacular environment. Its courtyards and latticework recall the spatial intelligence of traditional Sri Lankan homes, while its restraint and geometry speak to a modernist discipline learned abroad.

Today, Geoffrey Bawa’s influence extends across the tropics. Architects in India, Southeast Asia, and beyond have adapted his principles: sensitivity to site, honesty of materials, seamless integration of landscape and building. Bawa’s architecture hinted at a sensibility that sought equilibrium, blending a sense of being in the world with a sense of rootedness. The House at Number 11 is the embodiment of this sentiment.

Following Bawa’s death in 2003, the house was entrusted to the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, which maintains it today as both a museum and guest residence. Visitors can book a guided tour, tracing the architect’s footsteps through courtyards and stairways, or stay overnight in one of the guest suites.

As Colombo grows denser and louder, Number 11 endures as a sanctuary of light, shadows and calm. It stands as testament to the fact that modernity need not mean separation from tradition or nature but can, with sensibility, invite a dialogue between all three.

In the end, Geoffrey Bawa’s contribution was not simply an aesthetic style but a sensibility — a way of seeing the world as layered, interdependent, enmeshed. Number 11 still expresses that vision, quietly and thoughtfully and eloquently. 

Note: these photos were taken with the kind permission of the Bawa Trust. While I was not permitted to photograph certain areas of Bawa’s private residence while visiting Number 11,  I would encourage anyone interested in this beautiful home to visit the Bawa Trust’s website and explore more of Number 11 here.

Dear customers,

From August 1^st, 2024, we will be taking a one year sabbatical.

During this time our shop will be on pause and it will not be possible to place an order with us until we return in autumn 2025. While away we will be answering emails periodically, however, as we will frequently be in remote locations without connectivity there may be delays in getting back to you. Please be patient and bear with us.

We sent out a note to everyone on our mailing list explaining a little bit more about our sabbatical. During our time away, we will continue to periodically send out updates through our mailing list including more information about when our shop will be reopening. You can read the email explaining more about our sabbatical here and to stay up to date with us from here on, you can sign up to our mailing list here.  

As we look over our favourite images from across the years showcasing the handcrafted and vintage items that have been available in our shop, we are deeply grateful to the artisans who crafted our products as well as the individuals who preserved our vintage finds well enough for them to still be in use today.

Most of all we are grateful to you, our dear customers, who have enabled all of the organic, slow growth we have been lucky enough to experience.  As we share the images we have captured over the years in this final blog post (for now!), we thank you for all of your support and look forward to welcoming you back upon our return in 2025.

Thank you, take care, and see you next year. Don’t forget to join us here if you would like to stay in touch until then. 

These images show our Vintage European Breadboard, a few pieces of vintage cutlery, Vintage Marmalade Jars used as utensil holders which are all still available, alongside our Handspun Eri Silk Cushion Covers, Classic French Table Glasses, Brass Water Mister, Shuro Palm Broom and Shuro Palm Hand Broom all of which are available in our webshop.  

Narrowing down: The first part for the process is a simple narrowing down of what I am looking for. The markets we go to have thousands of beautiful products that are different every time. This uniqueness is the beauty of vintage and antique items. It also means we never quite know what we will find. The first stage involves disregarding anything that does not meet our requirement for size and/or weight. There are so many gorgeous large pieces at these markets and fairs but our business is not currently set up for shipping large items such as furniture or large decorative objects. This means that as difficult as it is to ignore these gorgeous items, with limited time (we usually only have one day at each fair) I have to ignore anything that doesn’t meet our shipping requirements. This quickly narrows the search down right from the get-go. 

Narrowing down, style: The second stage of narrowing down involves style. There are many objects and items that I personally like but that do not align with our store’s aesthetic. Preserving our shop’s visual identity means narrowing down the criteria for which products do and do not align with the overall look and feel of Ellei Home. I therefore try to ignore all the lovely items that do not align with our shop’s aesthetic: nothing bright, polished or new, too decorative or ornate. Instead, I focus on natural materials, aged pieces or objects with a rich patina, neutral colour, simple and timeless design but with something slightly special.

A simple design with something special: I’ll expand on this final point as it is one that is key for guiding my visual search. When thinking about timeless pieces that will look good years or even decades down the line, simplicity is often key. The more understated a design is the more likely it is to be able to blend in with a variety of styles and therefore stay relevant through passing trends. However, if an item is too plain, without even a hint of something that catches our eye, it can make objects feel bland and lifeless. The perfect balance for me is a simple design with a little something extra. For example, I usually choose simple cutlery designs, but I look for a rich patina and something that helps it to stand out: a pattern on the handle, a quirky cut to the tine, a decorative element on the neck. Nothing too over the top but eye-catching enough to make the set feel unique while still remaining elegant, understated, and timeless.

Versatile staples: We come across many truly unique pieces, but we are also always looking for certain staples that I adore and think work well in many different kinds of interiors. A few of the pieces we are always on the lookout for include vintage wooden stools (these can be used as bedside tables, additional seating, drinks rests beside a sofa, or large plant pot holders),  vintage wooden cutting boards (I love these because they can infuse an entire kitchen with that vintage look simply by adding two or three of these boards), vintage cutlery (these can be mixed and matched with new flatware for a collected look and feel), and brass candle holders (vintage brass candle holders look great in almost every style of home). We can usually find at least a few of these pieces at every market or fair we go to so I always keep my eyes open for them.

Material and colour: A further important selection criteria is material and colour. We always go for natural materials such as wood and clay, fabrics such as cotton or linen, and metals such as brass and copper. I like to select neutral colours that provide a versatile base onto which our customers can layer their own style. Rather than offering loud, bright, eye-catching pieces, I select warm items in muted colours with a rich patina. These pieces add character without overpowering a decorative scheme. Whether it is an aged brass candle holder or a simple clay vase, the idea is that they can blend into a variety of decorative schemes and look good mixed with flowers and candles in neutral colours as well as provide the base onto which bright and vibrant colours can be added.

Creating a collection: finally, I like to consider how all of the pieces will look together. Mixing and layering is what gives stylish interiors that creative, collected look that distinguishes them from interiors that look like every item was bought all at once. I want the items we offer to work well together and enhance one another so that when purchased together they add up to more than the sum of the individual parts.

Art: I am always on the lookout for art works. I am looking for pieces that are not too large and with a calming or creative theme. I am always drawn to landscapes, still life, and art that captures something of the creative process (from cooking to agriculture to paintings of artists or musicians). But the single most important element in selecting an artwork for the shop is colour. Muted colours allow art to blend in with the colour scheme of our permanent collection enhancing any other products purchased alongside them as well as allowing the piece to blend more easily into a variety of homes. Finally, if the art work is framed, the frame itself needs to be simple, elegant, and enhance rather than detract from the art work (a lovely patina to the frame is a bonus).  

My final selection criteria is the one that is impossible to accurately explain. It is always frustrating to hear something like this mentioned when someone is explaining their process, nevertheless, it is a crucial part of my selection process: does the item speak to me? Does it capture my attention or my heart? While difficult to capture in words it is a skill that can be honed over time. Continuously reflecting on what we like and why, what captures our attention and what unites the objects that we grow to love more over time rather than tire of, is like a muscle. The more we use it the easier it becomes to exercise this skill and slowly, with time and patience, we begin to develop our own unique style.

It's important to remember that everyone gets it wrong sometimes. I put great care into my product selection and over the years I have honed the skill of selecting lovely pieces I am proud to stock in our shop. However, each time I go for a buying trip I will get something wrong. I’ll be too quick and not check a product over well enough and discover later that it has a crack, dent, or blemish that is just too intrusive to pass on, or I will select a product that felt good at the time but out of the context of the jumble of the antiques market just looks odd and unappealing. Part of creating a collected home is that every so often we will get it wrong. A piece that looked great in store or a market just doesn’t work in our own home. When this happens, I tend to find different ways of passing the item on, whether it is giving it to friends in whose homes it would work, or selling it at a second hand market.  The point is that no matter how much we hone our skill, occasional errors are unavoidable, and that is part of the process.

For me, vintage pieces are a joy to collect. Sourcing new items from antiques markets can feel like a treasure hunt and I love the pleasure of looking through our finds, over the following weeks while we prepare them for our new collection release. While these trips are very time consuming and preparing our collections very labour intensive, I have come to value the Vintage and Collected collection as an integral part of our store’s offering and love how it adds character and uniqueness to our product range.

As a thank you to the people signed up to our mailing list, and because most of the items in these collections are one off pieces, we release our Vintage and Collected collections exclusively to the people on our mailing list first before later making any remaining items available to everyone through our shop. This gives our email subscribers the best chance of purchasing one of the unique items before they are released to everyone else. If you would like to gain access to the collection once it is released, be sure to sign up to our mailing list.

Images above show several new items from our upcoming Vintage and Collected collection as well as our Handmade Linen Tablecloth in Warm White and Handmade Linen Napkin Sets in Off-White, Sisal Lantern Lampshade, Handmade Speckled Matt Glazed Ramen Bowls, Breakfast Bowls, Side and Dinner Plates, Classic French Table Glasses, Hand Forged Copper Stacking Cups, Handmade Linen Kitchen Towel in Hay, Brass Water Mister and Handmade Crushed Linen Blanket in Hay.

As we prepare to launch our second Vintage and Collected Collation, I find myself reflecting on the many and varied merits of decorating our homes with vintage pieces. I wanted to mention a few of these points, reiterating why I am so pleased to be offering some vintage items in our shop alongside our permanent collection.

Ethical, Environmental

One of the main advantages of decorating using vintage and found (ie. second-hand) items is the many environmental benefits that these pieces have over buying new products for our home. Consumption and waste production in the modern Western world have reached a level that feels entirely unsustainable. The majority of new products sold require the use of raw materials and energy in order to be manufactured. Additionally, trend-focused cycles of modern consumption see products manufactured for seasonal use rather than longevity. These short life cycles create an enormous amount of waste not only through the waste of the raw materials and energy used to create them but also in the land, sea, and air pollution they create when no longer in use. Buying vintage home goods contributes to reducing the use of raw materials, energy, and waste by re-circulating and thereby extending the life-cycle of products that have already been made.

Quality, Timelessness, Individuality

Homes that incorporate vintage and antique pieces have a timeless quality that stands out with the flow of passing trends. The incorporation of vintage items into our homes has a kind of inoculating effect against the look of datedness as a result of shifting trends. Because vintage and antique pieces occupy their own timeless style niche they have the unique ability of doing the same for our interiors. By their very existence many decades or centuries later, pieces that have stood the test of time demonstrate their quality and enduring appeal. In a world of mass production where low quality, low cost pieces ubiquitously fill homes across the globe, vintage items infuse spaces with a sense of enduring quality and individuality.

Rich, Characterful Interiors

A home décor scheme that incorporates vintage items has a richness, unlike the flatness and sterility of mass-produced, trend-focused décor. Due to their age but also the fact that many vintage items come from a time when objects were made or finished by hand, vintage pieces tend to be more unique, making the interiors they fill more individual and characterful too. Each new vintage piece incorporated into a modern interior brings with it the character and depth inherent in its storied past.

Comforting Warmth

Homes that incorporate worn and well-loved pieces have an instantly warm and comforting feel to them. There is something about objects that have acquired a patina, slowly over time, that adds a richness to them that cannot be recreated in new pieces. Spending time in spaces that have well-used objects subconsciously signals to our minds and hearts that this is a space we can relax in. We don’t need to keep up the pretence of perfection; we can let our guard down to settle in and feel at ease. What’s more every vintage item comes with a story that speaks to us of the continuity of our place within the greater scheme of human culture. We are not the owners of vintage pieces, we are simply their current keepers before we too will eventually pass them on to someone else.

A Slower, More Considered Approach to Decorating

Decorating with vintage items encourages a slower approach to creating our homes. Searching for an item that is just the right size or colour can take time. And because vintage products tend to be one-of-a-kind items, they encourage us to slow down when decorating our homes. This in turn creates a more thoughtful decorative scheme compared to purchasing everything all at once. Our homes become individual to us, tailored to the slow unfolding story of our unique life.

We are happy to be able to offer a unique selection of vintage items in our upcoming Vintage and Collected Collection. You can see many of the unique pieces that will be available for sale in the images below. As most of these pieces are one-of-a-kind items initially they will be released exclusively to the people on our mailing list in order to give them the best chance of purchasing the item they want. Subsequently, any remaining items will be released to everyone else through our online shop. To gain access to the collection you can sign up to our mailing list and you will receive an exclusive access link once the collection is live. 

Sign up to our mailing list here.

The struggle between differentiation (becoming an individualised self) on the one hand and integration (feeling that self integrated into a wider whole) on the other, follows us through much of our life. In our own way, each one of us struggles to on the one hand, differentiate ever more fully from the world around us, defining with ever sharper clarity, obtained through the unique experiences we collect throughout our lifetime, who we are on our own unique path. At the same time, the process of differentiation is necessarily connected to our environment and the other living beings we interact with. It is through engaging with the wider world that we can begin to define what we are and what we are not, thereby creating an authentic sense of self rooted in real-lived experience.

In the book “The Meaning of Things” psychologists, researchers, and authors Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton point out that this two-sided dialectic of differentiation and integration is also reflected in the history and etymology of the word symbol. They point out that “in ancient Greek, sym-ballein meant to ‘throw together” or “join”. The phrase came to designate a coin that two friends break in half, each with the hope of reuniting. When the two friends would meet again, the joining of the two half coins signified the relationship between the two persons, so the separation of the coin served the larger purpose of unity. Thus, symbol originally meant that which brings people together.”

It is fascinating to consider that the very origin of the word symbol captures both the ideas of differentiation and integration. Throughout the course of human culture people have used symbols as a means of both highlighting their uniqueness and as a means of integrating the self into large identities. For example, symbolic decorative elements in body art such as tattoos serve to both distinguish the uniqueness of the individual, for example by drawing on their unique story to emphasise something personal to them, while at the same time using wider cultural references, aesthetic styles, and symbols that have meaning within the wider culture.

The deeply ingrained tendency toward symbolism within human culture is also at work within the spaces and environments we create. As Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton highlighted, we may live in physical environments, but we are constantly creating cultural environments within them.  

Our homes can be powerful symbols of the self when we have the freedom and the means to construct them in a way that embodies aspects of what we consider to be valuable and significant in our lives. There is no space more amenable to being shaped according to our unique preferences and desires than our home environment. Our homes are our physical shelters and places of emotional solace and rest. Our homes are spaces that can represent and reinforce who we are making our sense of self tangible to ourselves and visible to others.

Our homes contain many of the objects that reflect the diverse elements of our personality and are therefore valuable expressions as well as reinforcers of who we are and what we value. Our home environments don’t just serve to facilitate the activates of our daily lives but also act as the containers for our emotional worlds and the activities that make life meaningful. 

Our homes exemplify that there is more contained within our physical environments than merely the sum of the objects within them. The unique combinations of spaces and objects that are specific to each individual home often reveal the personal and cultural symbols that are cherished, whether consciously or unconsciously, by the people who live within them. Our homes not only reflect something about who we are as individuals but also something about what we have internalised from, and how we relate to, the world around us. Our homes are a reflection both of our personal sense of self as well as the wider cultures and systems we are a part of.

Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton argue that due to their symbolic nature, our homes are an important tool in the process of differentiation and integration. With regards to the process of differentiation, our homes contain objects that serve the symbolic function of highlighting our uniqueness – for example, our skills, or personal interests, our superiority over others, etc. Objects that highlight achievements such as accolades or the unique qualities or experiences we have had, such as our travels, qualifications, trophies, etc. all serve the process of differentiation, distinguishing us form others and emphasising our individuality.

On the other hand, many of the symbols within our homes serve to highlight and reinforce our sense of belonging to groups, organisations, to family, or belief systems and ideologies. The objects within our homes that highlight our shared origin with others, shared belief system, shared values, shared belonging to groups or institutions all serve to symbolically express and reinforce the integration of the individual within their wider social, cultural, and relational context.

Through displaying photographs of family and friends we both reinforce the value that these relationships hold for ourselves as well as signalling to others that we belong to a wider group of people. Similarly, by displaying religious symbols, we highlight and reinforce our shared beliefs and values to ourselves as well as affirming our affiliation with our religious group to others.

Moreover, this distinction between the objects that serve to differentiate us from others and those that serve to integrate us into the broader systems we are a part of are not always clear cut. Often times, the objects in our homes serve both purposes all at once. For example, the display of trophies, qualifications, and accolades serve to at once reinforce the sense of affiliation and belonging to the institutions and activities that award them as well as highlighting our own unique achievements that distinguish us from others.

In order to thrive across the human lifespan, we must continually finesse the difficult task of staying connected to both ourselves as well as the wider world around us. We must cultivate our individuality in increasingly complex and differentiated ways while at the same time discovering ever deeper ways to integrate this individuality and put it to use in service of something beyond ourselves. The more we can cultivate our own unique story and point of view, talents, and abilities and put these to use to serve other people and the world around us, the more whole we grow to feel.

It is one of the great ironies of life that we become whole by giving up ever greater parts of our ego. A further paradox is that this has to be done while simultaneously cultivating an increasingly individuated sense of self; one that does not rely on the external world for validation or its understanding of itself but instead uses the unique experiences, skills, and perspectives to tend to something in the interconnected sphere we all share.   

When we are mindful and considered about how we create our home environments and the objects we bring into them our homes can help to cultivate and reinforce this process. They can help us to cultivate a self-world system in which our unique psychic energy becomes increasingly invested in goals transcending the personal needs of the ego while ultimately nourishing it and helping it to individuate. In a very embodied way, our homes can help us to clarify and reinforce who we are and what matters most to us. When we use this ability mindfully in service of understanding, connecting to, and developing our unique sense of self while at the same time integrating that self deeply within the context of the world around us, our homes can help us to grow and develop in ways that are essential for thriving.

The images above show various different items from our upcoming Vintage and Collected Collection as well as our Safari Daybed, Kapok Safari Daybed Mattresses, Handspun Cotton Cushion Covers in Ecru, a brand new Handspun Eri Silk Cushion Cover that will launch soon, Hand Forged Copper Bundt Cake Mould, Handmade Linen Napkin Sets in Off-White, Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters, Shuro Palm Trivets, Hand Carved Black Walnut Cutting Board, Hand Carved Coffee Scoop, Brass Coffee Pour over Stand, Pallares Solsona Professional Kitchen Scissors, various natural cleaning brushes, Tawashi Brushes, Classic French Table Glasses and Cotton Lantern Lampshade.

This body we are born into has a wide range of complex and ever-changing needs that we must attend to and attempt to satisfy if we want to survive. At the same time, there are many constraints placed upon us by the external world in terms of how we can satisfy those needs. Some, like the constraints imposed by external reality are non-negotiable. No matter how much we attempt to push back against certain realities such as loss, death, accidents, ageing, or illness we will only discover that we are powerless in their wake. But other constraints, such as the many limitations imposed by the cultures and systems we are a part of, are open to critical evaluation. In many cases when the satisfaction of our internal needs is possible yet sanctioned by others around us (for example our families, societies, or cultural norms) it can be useful to examine whether it is worth honouring our internal needs, even at the cost of exclusion or sanction, or whether we would be better served to give up the internal need in favour of fitting in or belonging. In reality the choice is often much more nuanced than this and we are usually best served by finessing, compromising or modifying in order to achieve a balance between the internal and external forces acting upon us.

As we mature, we can learn to develop ever more refined means of negotiating the balance between satisfying our individual needs and desires and learning how to compromise or alter these needs so that they become more amenable to the world around us. Throughout our life this delicate, pendular dance often swings too far in one direction or another. When we push too hard for our individual needs to be met, we risk alienating others and being excluded from the wider systems and cultures we are a part of. Human beings are deeply relational creatures that have a deep need to be connected to something beyond ourselves in order to thrive. In fact, the fullness of our sense of self only emerges and develops when we are also in relationship with others and the wider world around us. Without this feeling of connectedness, we can easily lose the sense of meaning in our lives that is so important for us to be able to thrive.

At the same time, if we conform too rigidly or give up too much of ourselves to the world around us, we risk losing that crucial connection to our own inner knowing, the only true north of our lives. Without a meaningful connection to the self, we are left unable to attune to our own wants and needs, leaving us vulnerable to the mixed messages arriving from the external world as well as feeling a constant need for validation from others.

Building on the work of Dewey (1934), in their book titled “The Meaning of Things” psychologists, researchers, and authors Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton note that “this dialectic defines the human predicament”: On the one hand we face the challenge of discovering “the limits of being, by expressing the purposes and potentials inherent in the individual organism [we] inhabit. This involves the ability to control the environment, others, and oneself by cultivating purposive habits of life through which one inhabits the world (Dewey, 1934, p.104)”. They suggest that only through learning how to shape and impact the external world around us do we learn the capabilities and limits of the organism we are in. At the same time, they highlight that whether consciously or unconsciously, we all have a sense of how “fragile and insignificant we are”. We know that the only way for this organism to thrive is to establish meaningful links between the self and the outside world; something beyond ourselves “other persons, groups or the greater patterns of the cosmos”.

Throughout our lives we balance the tension of adapting and conforming in order to connect with others, with the  independence required to feel connected to ourselves and our own inner-knowing. By sacrificing our needs and desires in favour of what the world asks of us, by continuously revising our beliefs and values in order to fit in, we risk losing our relationship to ourselves and our own deep inner knowing. At the same time, if we focus exclusively on the satisfaction of our own needs, we risk forgoing that deeply rewarding feeling of connection that comes from being integrated within the wider world around us. The challenge as we progress through life is to cultivate and express the depths of our unique being while at the same time integrating that expression into the world around us in ever more dynamic, meaningful, and interconnected ways. 

In his book titled “IntraConnected: Me + We as the integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging” psychiatrist, professor, and author, Dan Siegel explains that our very health and wellbeing are based on the successful negotiation of this dialectic. For him, true and deep integration involves simultaneously honouring our differences while at the same time cultivating our linkages to one another and the world around us. For Siegel, a feeling of wholeness and integration is created through the balancing of uniqueness, specialisation, and differentiation on the one hand with the connection, interwovenness, and linkage that allow us to integrate our unique elements of self into the wider world around us.

Many thinkers argue that the successful negotiation of this tightrope of differentiation and integration is the very characterisation of a healthy complex system whether that is an individual or a culture. When a person or a culture is too individuated, they cannot function coherently, unable to unite to work in unison as a whole in order to achieve something greater than the individual parts can achieve on their own. With every individual part working solely in its own interest and without consolidation with the other parts around it, the larger system falls apart. At the same time, without meaningful differentiation between the individual parts within a system, with every individual carrying out exactly the same function in the same way, there is none of the specialisation necessary for the creation of the complex systems that can achieve far greater things than any individual can.

I have tried to set the scene for how the tension between tending to and cultivating our individuality and integrating this individuality in meaningful ways into something beyond ourselves is one of the fundamental tensions of being human. Successfully negotiating this tension in ever more complex ways is key to living a life where we can thrive and not just survive. In our next blog post I want to share how our homes and the spaces we create can serve in this process helping us to cultivate both our sense of self and our connection to the wider world around us.

Then there are those object that somehow capture a timeless quality, weathering passing trends and shifting eras while exuding an appeal that only deepens with the passage of time. These objects are most often well made, deeply functional, and sturdy enough to withstand the passage of time.

Quality and craftsmanship are often distinguishing features between these two types of objects. But truly key elements of creating enduring objects are the amount of care, attention, and time devoted to their creation process by the maker. Some objects are endowed with a quality that is difficult to name that is a kind of deep soulfulness. When objects are made with care and attention from a place of devotion to something beyond late capitalist market forces they become timelessly appealing.

As a way of illustrating how a creation process rooted in care, attention, and our values leads to timeless, soulful designs, I highlighted Shaker communities as an example of this way of making. In part one of this two-part blog post I introduced the Shakers and the beautiful, lasting objects and spaces they brought into being from a place of their deepest values. But to truly appreciate why Shaker creations have captivated people for centuries, we can take a deeper look at the ways in which every aspect of their design and creation process was informed by, and rooted in, their values, their spirituality, and their unique way of life.

An Aesthetic Rooted in Values

The Shakers’ entire aesthetic sensibility was rooted in their values. Every design choice they made for the objects they created served the higher purposes of integrity, utility, and strength. Nothing in their work was done out of vanity and every choice was intentionally made to be the best possible solution that would serve these values.

While the shakers were profoundly non-materialistic, they were also deeply sensitive to their surroundings and strove for grace and harmony in all they created. Labour was a deeply spiritual practice for them, and they viewed every aspect of their creation process as a continuous act of devotion to God. And while their designs were born out of values such as utility and purity, above any individual value was the master driver of the creation process itself as a means of honouring God.

The creation of objects from this deeply spiritual place of devotion, deep care and attention, resulted in a distinct aesthetic defined by tranquillity and order.  The stark contrast to the creation process for the majority of objects which are created today, under the master values of profit and speed, provides one frame of reference for the enduring appeal of Shaker creations.

Design Purity Creates Timelessness

The shakers put great care and attention into their designs. They evaluated and re-evaluated their creations with an eye toward continuous refinement. While the Shakers never aimed for beauty for its own sake, the continuous refinement of their creations ultimately resulted in elegant, harmonious pieces that have allowed their designs to endure until today.

The characteristic style of shaker design, unadorned and stripped of frills, focused on strength, integrity, utility, and longevity. Rather than masking their furniture with lacquer or veneer, Shaker design purity exposed the integrity of the raw material they were working with. Their finishes consisted of milk-based paints and faint washes that allowed the wood grain to show through.

Design features that served no purpose or wasted precious materials were considered frivolous and therefore did not feature in Shaker creations. Yet for all their restraint, the objects they crafted had exceptional elegance and were profoundly aesthetically pleasing. They exuded the same deep harmony and order that the Shakers aspired to in all aspects of their lifestyle.

This elegant purity combined with functionality not only continued to inspire individual designers and entire design movements in the years that followed (for example much of the functional simplicity of modern Danish design has its roots in Shaker traditions) but has also cemented the enduring appeal of Shaker furniture. 

The quiet simplicity, and deep harmony of Shaker designs allows them to blend in rather than compete with other styles, ensuring that these pieces have continued to find admirers over the centuries and find their way into homes to the present day.

Utility, Craftmanship and Beauty

The simplicity, restraint and functionality of Shaker design has seen it endure maintaining its influence on the wider design community for over 200 years.  One of the ultimate achievements of Shaker design was combining exceptional utility with their unique form of aesthetic simplicity that resulted in objects of enduring grace and beauty.

The adage “all beauty that has no foundation in use, soon grows distasteful and needs continuous replacement with something new” credited to Shaker craftsmen, exemplifies their attitude towards the link between functionality and aesthetics. For Shakers utility was one of the main tenants of good design; the aesthetic appeal of any object was inextricably linked to it being deeply functional. 

While many have interpreted this adage as indicating that the Shakers believed that beauty would emerge through the perfect execution of utility, a less dualistic take that I believe is more closely rooted in their values is that for Shakers, utility and beauty were inextricably intertwined. It is not that beauty emerges out of utility but rather that when an object or a space perfectly carries out its intended function, there is a deep beauty within this process.

In “The Phenomenon of Life”, architect and theorist  Christopher Alexander wrote that “because of our still-prevailing 20^th century viewpoint, students are convinced that “beauty” comes about as a result of the concern with practical efficiency. In other words, if you make it practical and efficient, then it will follow that it becomes beautiful. Form follows function!” (p. 423). But using Shaker design as a particularly potent illustration of his point, Alexander argued, that in fact, utility and beauty both emerge as a result of a skilled craftsperson’s focus on the wholeness of what they were creating. This notion is a shift away from binaries that place one value above another in a hierarchy, toward a more holistic way of thinking that focuses on the entirety of the design process.

When discussing one of the classic Shaker designs, the Shaker box, Alexander questions “did this start as a practical idea which then just happened to be beautiful? I do not think so…it started with an instinct for what is beautiful” through the maker concentrating on the wholeness rather than any individual feature (p. 422). 

What Alexander is highlighting is the interconnected nature of Shaker design. By using their values as a guide for all that they crafted, focusing on the whole, and with it every element of the creation process, the Shakers did not allow any single value (such as profit) to drive their creation process. The Shakers were free to focus on perfectly executing all of the aspects of their creation process because their labour was first and foremost an act of devotion.

Spirituality and Soul

While many people today still appreciate the quality of Shaker craftsmanship and its aesthetic value, fewer people are familiar with the spirituality out of which it emerged and how deeply intertwined this spirituality is with the Shaker creation process.

The Shakers intentionally lived apart from mainstream society and while they regularly conducted business with the outside world, selling their meticulously crafted objects to admirers from near and far, they expressly attempted to keep their reliance on, and interaction with, the rest of the world to a minimum. This separateness and relative isolation allowed them to cultivate their values and practice a deep commitment to their spirituality, living simply without vanity or greed.

Living separately from mainstream society offered Shaker communities the breathing space needed for their own values and beliefs to flourish and be expressed in everything that they did. Shaker societies strove to glorify God with every act of daily life and they strove to attain perfection in these acts as a sign of their devotion. This was expressed first and foremost through their labour, whether that was growing herbs, sweeping, or crafting their famous ladder-back chairs. The Shakers considered all labour to be an act of worship and treated every act as if it was an expression of their devotion and a contribution to creating the heaven on earth they longed for. Above all else, their graceful creations were the manifestation of their religious experience and their belief system.

The objects they created were not subservient to capitalist market forces, with its greed for increasing profit and production speed. Nor was their production and creation process driven by ego or the desire for status, fame, or prestige. Instead, the Shakers created from a place of service to something beyond themselves. Freed from the tyranny of market pressure and the self-serving drives of the ego, Shaker craftsmen poured their soul into perfecting the qualities of mindful labour, meticulous design, and skilful execution as an expression of their devotion to something beyond themselves.

In ‘The Timeless way of Building’, Christopher Alexander wrote that “we have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary…In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical, most religious, most wonderful – these are not less ordinary than most things – they are more ordinary than most things. It is because they are so ordinary, indeed, that they strike to the core” (p.219). 

Alexander’s point is deeply relevant to the creations and designs of the Shakers. Freed from the tyranny of market forces, their value-led design and production processes allowed them to create from a deeply spiritual place. Their objects became enduringly beautiful by merging simplicity with functionality to create something seemingly ordinary yet gracefully striking and deeply practical. Their designs have endured precisely because of the “ordinariness that strikes right to the core” (Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building).

The beliefs and values that drive Ellei Home are also based on the beauty of simplicity, the value in craftsmanship, and the preference for a soulful, enduring aesthetic over passing trends. These ideals align well with the Shaker sensibility which is why I was drawn to design elements that have their heritage in Shaker design long before I knew the details of the the values that led to their creation.

For me, Shaker creations demonstrate that what has the power to endure is all that is created with love, care, and intention. So much of what is made today is driven entirely by profit. This focus strips an object of its soul. The reason that Shaker designs were so lastingly impactful is that they were created from a place of intention to honour a set of values that were larger than the individual makers, connecting them, and those of us who still admire these designs today, to something far greater than just ourselves. 

Images above show our Belgian Linen Bedding in Pure White, Handwoven Merino Wool Blanket in Natural, Belgian Linen Fitted Sheets in Pure White, Handspun Cotton Cushion Covers in Ecru, Handwoven Cotton Cushion Covers in Traditional Stripes, Hand Forged Copper Stacking Cups, Shuro Palm Hand Broom, Vintage Framed Watercolour Painting.

Architect, theorist, and author Christopher Alexander wrote about this quality in many of his books. He called the quality “life-giving” or “the quality without a name”. In his book ‘The Timeless way of Building’, he wrote that objects or spaces are most likely to have this quality when they are “made with care and with attention to the small things” (p. 134). He notes that “the love, and care, and patience needed to [bring about the life-giving quality] can only exist when each detailed part is cared for, and shaped, by someone who has the time and patience and knowledge to understand the forces acting on it.” (P. 164).

One truly remarkable example of the idea that things of lasting beauty are borne out of the time, care, and the attention poured into them, are the objects and spaces created by Shaker communities. I have admired the simplicity, functionality, and timelessness of classic Shaker designs for many years but it was only when I took the time to gain a better understanding of the values and ideals that the Shakers lived by that I began to understand why their designs were so extraordinary. In this blog post I want to share a brief introduction to the Shakers before moving onto sharing some thoughts in our next blog post on why their designs and creations have this lasting, enduring quality and beauty to them.

The Shakers

The Shakers were a religious sect of self-sufficient, egalitarian agrarians who originated from  the ‘Shaking Quakers’, known for the exuberant form of ecstatic dancing that was an essential part of their worship services. Originally founded in England in the late 1740’s a few of the early Shaker members, led by Mother Ann Lee, sailed across the Atlantic ocean and settled in America in the late 1770's. Uncommonly egalitarian for their time, the Shakers practiced communal living, equality of the sexes, pacifism and a simple form of self-sufficient agrarian living apart from mainstream society.

The Shakers’ everyday lives were entirely centred around their beliefs and values. They strove to enact these values in all that they did. They were practical and inventive and even though they deeply valued the work of their hands, they were not luddites. Shaker’s embraced new technology as timesaving devices and are credited with several technological innovations including the circular saw. At the same time, Shaker craftspeople were masters of their trade who perfected a style of design that was simple, durable, and functional yet so elegant in its simplicity that the distinctive style they created has been revered for centuries.

Particularly relevant to their designs and craftsmanship was their deep belief in the value of good work not merely as a means of survival or production but as a means of worship. Mother Ann Lee was credited with saying “do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow” beautifully portraying the value that the Shakers placed on mindful, spiritual labour over mere production. The Shakers strove for perfection in all that they created as a way to glorify God. The thought, care, and attention with which they executed their craft resulted in exceptional design and production and has made their creations appealing to people all over the world.  

Because of the enduring quality of their work, their distinctive designs are still prized and imitated today. From the Shaker ladder-back chair, to the classic Shaker kitchen, to their iconic peg rails which are all still being reproduced today, the distinctive Shaker aesthetic has inspired many designers and design styles including elements of modern Danish design that has found its way into most modern homes through brands such as Ikea. Their innovations and designs have been both directly copied and used as inspiration and a jumping-off point for many modern designs.

The Shaker aesthetic is timeless, simple, clean, and functional. But the reason that these qualities came to define the Shaker style is that they emerged out of something far deeper than a mere focus on trying to evoke them. The soul of shaker design comes from the fact that everything they created was an embodiment of their deepest values. I believe that when an object or a space or anything for that matter is created from a place of our deepest values it is much more likely to be endowed with that “life-giving quality” that architect Christopher Alexander describes in his books.

The objects and spaces that the Shakers created were deeply interwoven with their values, belief-system, and their way of life. To appreciate why Shaker creations have captivated people for centuries, we need to develop a sense for the ways in which every aspect of their design and creation process was informed by, and rooted in, their values and beliefs.

In our next blog post we will take a look at some of the key values that informed the Shaker design process as well as how designing and creating from this deeper, more soulful place resulted in the enduring qualities of their designs.

Images above show our Hand Forged Copper Cups, Handmade Fluted Side Plates, Stone Washed Baguette Flatware Set, Classic French Table Glasses, Pallares Solsona Kitchen Knife, Brass Water Mister, Handmade Linen Napkin Sets in Off-White and Various unique pieces from our Vintage and Collected Collection including our Vintage French Ironstone Terre De Fer Plates, Vintage Set of Three Bud Vases (all other items now sold out).

Our homes are at their most soulful and satisfying when they can successfully reflect back to us something core about our sense of self. Through the design process of our homes many of us are trying to replicate, reject, or rework spaces from our history in an attempt to define ourselves and create a satisfying container for our physical and emotional worlds.

Setting aside the idealised images of what the perfect home ought to look like, we can instead begin to utilize reflective practices that tap into our own, deeply personal, sense of home. Whether we are aware of it or not, our personal sense of home is constructed through the amalgamation of memories of physical spaces, images, and emotional experiences we have encountered in all the places that have to do with home throughout the course of our life. Each one of us engages in the creation of our own unique cartography of home. The design of our spaces will be most satisfying when it can tap into some of the many and varied elements that make up this unique and personal map of what home looks and feels like for us in its ideal.

The world of design is fickle and creating our homes solely on the basis of current trends can leave us dissatisfied as soon as the tides shift ushering the current trend out and bring the next one in. Taking the time to uncover some of the unconscious images and memories that have shaped our unique sense of home in order to use these to guide our design decisions can shield us from the discontent of following a trends-based approach to design. When our spaces are created to reflect something deeply personal to us, we are more likely to stay satisfied with our creations through the changing whims of the design world.

What follows is a series of questions intended to prompt reflection on your own unique cartography of home. Once completed these self-exploration exercise can serve as a tool for decisions making. As with all that we encourage, they should be gentle nudges towards getting to know ourselves a little better and drawing what may be under the surface into conscious awareness. They are not intended to serve as rigid or restrictive codes to follow or standards to hold ourselves accountable to. They are here to serve and inspire us not to draw our attention to what we don’t have or the gap between where we are and where we would like be. 

You can return to these questions again and again, especially during transitional moments of your home life such as changes in you living situation, renovating or moving into a new home. The aim of these reflections is to offer a tool for aligning our decision-making to something deeply rooted within our own sense of self. The more we uncover, the more personal guidance we have to use alongside any external sources of inspiration. This can be particularly useful when we feel stuck, lost, or unable to make a design decision. We hope the explorations are thought provoking and insightful and that they will help you to become more intimately acquainted with your own unique sense of home.

You can note down your answers on a piece of paper or in a journal so that you can return to them and add to them again and again.

Part I: Unearthing the Past

Remembering Places Past

• Reflect on the various places you spent time in as a child and adolescent, your home or a relative’s home, a public building you spent a lot of time in or a friend’s home. It can be an entire home or just a room or small space. Out of all of these places, which felt the most nurturing and comforting to you? Take some time to reflect on why?

• What are some of the most beautiful spaces you encountered as child and young person? What made these spaces so beautiful for you. If you cannot think of any notice this too as it might indicate that the spaces you spent time in did not meet your aesthetic needs.

• What are some of the object or items of furniture from your past that left a lasting impression on you? What did they look like? Why did they leave a mark in your memory?

• What did the objects and places look like around you as you were growing up? Does this align with your tastes today or has it pushed you toward different preferences?

Emotional Landscape

• What are the main feelings and emotions that come to mind when you think of the word home?
  • Which objects best represent these feelings for you?

• What are your favourite childhood memories?
  • Where did they take place?
  • What made these moments special for you?
  • Where any objects a relevant part of these memories for you?

• Where did you feel safe, nurtured and content as a child or young person? Take a moment to reflect brining to mind as many details of this place as well as the experiences you had there.
  • Why did you feel, safe, nurtured, or content there?

A Sense of Magic

Are there any places that you found magical as a child or young person?

• If yes, take a moment to bring to mind the details of the sights, sounds, and sensations you experienced there.

• What contributed to creating the magic of this place for you?

• Are there any design elements from this place that you could use to inform your choices for your home today?

The Movies in our Minds

Our minds are full of conscious and unconscious images that we have collected along our own unique path to adulthood. Some of these images come from movies and shows or books and magazines we encountered when we were growing up. Rewatching some of this media can reveal surprising extents to which images we encounter when we are young can influence our design preferences as adults.

Pick a movie or tv show from your childhood or youth that contained a place that made an impression on you. If it is famous enough, you can Google some of the images but ideally go back an rewatch parts or all of the movie so that you can examine this space and the objects within it. Has this movie or tv show informed your sense of home and the design elements that you are drawn to today? If so how?

Part II: Reflections on the Present

• What are the connections between your sense of self and the design preferences that you hold? How do the designs you are drawn to reflect something about you?

• In what ways does your current home reflect your life, your sense of self, or your values?

• What are the objects in your home that feel reflective of your sense of self?

• If you were to embark on a new design project in future, what would you want to change or add in order for your space to be a more closely aligned with your sense of self?

• Select an object you have recently encountered (it can be a decorative item, a functional object or a piece of furniture) that you feel reflects you well. How does this object mirror something about your sense of self.

• What feelings and experiences would you like to experience more of in your home?

In a world of design where trends come and go at an ever-increasing pace building and nurturing a connection to a very personal design aesthetic can feel like the best shield against discontent. When the designs of our homes are informed by a deep connection to our personal preferences and sense of self we are more likely to create spaces that feeling enduringly satisfying and deeply nourishing.

Images above show many of the items from our upcoming Vintage and Collected Collection including vases, candle holder, plates and oil painting and our Hand Forged Copper Stacking Cup, Stone Washed Flatware Set, Heavy Washed Belgian Linen Napkins and Brass Water Mister.

Our homes are often our most intimate and private spaces. In addition to serving our needs for safety, shelter, and belonging and facilitating the activities of our daily lives, when the selection of objects in our home is unique to us, our homes can reflect and reinforce who we are and who we wish to become.

When considering the design of their homes, people often look to architects and interior designers, magazines and design books. Much of what we use as inspiration for the creation and decoration of our homes comes from external sources. And yet, the incredibly intimate nature of our private spaces means that while external sources can serve as helpful reference points, the creation of a home that truly supports our unique character and life can only ever be done by one authority. No one can answer the questions that will make our homes reflect and nurture our lives and our sense of self like we can. 

Creating spaces that reflect and reinforce our sense of self can feel like a daunting task, but it need not be. One way to begin this process is to start by excavating our own history of place. We can explore our unique feelings of home by becoming familiar with our past sense of place and drawing inspiration from the places that have shaped our physical and emotional landscapes throughout our lives. 

Our personal preferences for spaces are woven out of a unique combination of physical and emotional impressions collected throughout our lives. By physical and emotional landscape, I am referring to both the physical spaces that have left a deep and lasting impression on us as well as the tapestry of emotional impressions that have contributed to creating our sense of comfort, belonging, safety and feeling nurtured.

Imprints of physical spaces that have made their way into our minds come from both places we have lived and spent time in - our homes, the homes of friends or relatives, or public spaces - as well as spaces encountered in movies and images throughout the formative years of our childhood and adolescence. The shaping of our sense of home by external sources such as the media may have played a particularly influential role if the physical spaces we spent time in did not meet our emotional, spiritual or aesthetic needs, making it more likely that we would take inspiration for our dreamscapes from places other than our immediate physical environment.

It can be an interesting experience to go back through old movies we frequently watched as a child or young adult in order to explore how the places and objects in those movies have woven their way into our sense of home. Looking back, we will often discover decorative styles, furniture, and objects that have influenced our present-day tastes even though we may not consciously be aware of them having done so.

In addition to the impressions left on our mind by the physical spaces we encountered throughout our lives, our sense of home is also constructed out of various feelings we associate with home. The emotions that relate to our sense of home are formed out of all those moments that contributed to making us feel safe, loved, nurtured and comfortable. These are so specific to each individual person that it is hard to offer anything that comes even close to a universal example. Cuddling on the sofa with a loving carer while reading a book or sharing a sliced apple, for example, might evoke feelings of safety, feeling seen and attended to. Particularly salient emotional moments such as these are informative in shaping our feeling of home and what we might be trying to recreate in our own house. Regardless of the individual details, what I am referring to are the intimate moments of comfort and love where we felt truly seen and connected. Moments such as these will have shaped our emotive sense of home as well as influencing which rooms we feel are important or what interactions and activities we want our spaces to facilitate.   

The collection of both the physical impressions of home – sights, sounds, smells and sensations, whether from real life or from what we saw in books and movies, as well as the emotional impressions of home – all contribute to creating the unique blueprint for what home looks and feels like for us in its ideal.

This blueprint is always operating in the background and shaping our choices and preferences whether we are aware of it or not. The reasons that becoming acquainted with this blueprint on a more conscious level can be helpful when engaging with the process of design is that the preferences noted within this blueprint are enduring and deeply rooted in our unique sense of self.

The feeling of tapping into our unique history of home and being able to bring elements of this past into our present and future in a mindful and conscious way can be a deeply gratifying experience. This exercise is the direct counter to fast-fashion-driven decision making, which is in its nature fleeting, transitory, and focused on external sources. By tapping into both the conscious and unconscious images, memories, and feelings that have shaped our sense of home, we can begin to create spaces that feel enduringly gratifying and deeply rooted in who we are, making our design decisions personal and deeply grounded within our sense of self

Decisions made based on enduring impressions of what home means to us rather than transitory trends offer us the best chance at deep, lasting satisfaction, and a more authentic connection to the self over the dissatisfaction inherent in passing trends.

We humans are meaning-seeking creatures. We have a deep need for the stories of our lives to feel integrated and meaningful to us. Symbolism is a big part of the way we make and convey meaning. Whether this is done on a conscious or unconscious level, our homes and the objects we fill them with are imbued with symbolic meaning. They evoke, express, and convey associations and beliefs about what is of value in life. The reflection of this symbolic meaning will always be most satisfying for us when the symbols we surround ourselves with affirm our most valued sense of self.

Over the next two blog posts we will be sharing a process to help you to begin to draw out your unique history of home. The questions we will be sharing can serve as prompts for beginning to bring your unique sense of home into conscious awareness.

We hope this exercise can serve as a useful and grounding resource for all those transitional moments such as moving into a new home, renovating, or redecorating as well as serving as a reference point for smaller decisions such as whether an object will enhance your overall sense of home. We will be sharing this process in our next blog post and if you would like to be notified when our blog posts are released you can sign up to our mailing list.

Images above show several items from our upcoming Vintage and Collected Collection including our vintage bread boards, vintage utensil holders, vintage cutlery, vintage shallow wooden bowls, vintage oil painting and vintage watercolour painting, vintage creamware plates and many more, Handmade Fluted Side and Dinner Plates, Handmade Fluted Soup Bowls, Handmade Fluted Fruit Bowl, Classic French Table Glasses, Hand Forged Copper Cups, Hand Forged Copper Bundt Cake Mould, Various Natural Cleaning Brushes, Copper Kettle (aged with time and use), Hand Forged Copper Stacking Cups, Handmade Linen Kitchen Towel in Taupe Grey, and Heritage Brass Water Mister.

Images above show various items from our upcoming Vintage and Collected Collection (available early next year), Hand Dyed Velvet Cushion Covers in Vault Blue, Handmade Fluted Side and Dinner Plates, Stone Washed Flatware Set, Hand Craved Black Walnut Cutting Board, Classic French Table Glasses, Heritage Brass Water Mister, Shuro Palm Trivet, Pallares Solsona Kitchen Knife, Handmade Linen Napkins In Off-White and Tasseled Handwoven Merino Wool Blanket. 

Sign up here to get access to our Vintage and Collected Collection once it is launched.

And yet, no matter how much thought and care we put into the process of selecting the objects we choose to offer, there is always an inherent ethical dilemma in the sale of new products.

The new resources and energy required to create new products, even when these are biodegradable and produced more thoughtfully, still requires the extraction of raw materials and result in the creation of more ‘things’ that will eventually need to be recycled or disposed of.

My approach in my personal life as well as the way I run my business is based on two principles I value: conscientiousness and moderation. I am always mindful of becoming dogmatic even for the most ethical causes because dogmatism can lead to the judgement of decisions that do not align with our own values which inevitably leads to the judgement of people whose actions do not align with our values.

I believe we can strive for improvement, making small consistent changes, while also acknowledging the many realities and constraints that act upon all of our decision making. In light of this belief, while there are undeniable and even unavoidable points of value inherent in the sale of new products, there is always a part of me that is searching for additional, complimentary approaches that might begin to address some of the concerns inherent in the sale of newly-produced goods.

Vintage and collected items that have previously been in use bypass some, though not all, of the ethical issues associated with the sale of new items. Vintage pieces offer individual buyers 'new' products without the use of new materials while at the same time reducing waste through the recirculation of goods.

In addition to the environmental benefits of vintage items there is another plus side to purchasing vintage pieces for your home. In a culture dominated by mass-production, mass-consumption and fast-fashion, the ubiquity of trends has seen the increased homogenisation of our lived environments. Individual homes are losing their unique soulfulness to trends that see so many of the same elements repeating across spaces all over the world. Collected pieces and vintage items can infuse a home with warmth and character through their used, lived-in patina as well as their smaller mass-market availability.

We have been considering adding a collection of vintage and collected items to our shop for several years now with both of the points raised above at the forfront of our minds. For the last few months, we have been working on a small collection of hand-selected vintage pieces collected from our travels, and vintage markets across the UK.

Our curation is based on the aesthetic principles of timelessness and simplicity. We select quality items that we hope will stand the test of time and become the vintage pieces of the future. Our existing collection of products pairs beautifully with our vintage items and the items have been carefully selected so that they can be mixed and matched. Simple forms, natural materials, neutral colours and a timeless aesthetic unite all of our products including new items as well as our vintage pieces creating a relaxed and effortless look and feel that we hope will look as good in years to come as it does today.

We will be starting with an initial, small collection of pieces we love and if there is appetite for these items we will aim to release more collections in future.

The initial collection will be released early next year through an exclusive link that will only be available to the people on our mailing list before later being made available to everyone through our web shop.

We are excited to share this small collection with you and hope to see it grow over the years. To get exclusive access to our Vintage and Collected collection upon its release early next year sign up to our mailing list.

Images above show our Brass Water Mister, Coffee Pour Over Stand, Handmade Fluted Stoneware Side Plate and Soup Bowls, Shuro Palm Handbroom, Stonewashed Flatware Set, Classic French Table Glasses and unique products from our new Vintage and Collected collection that include a framed seascape image, tray, candle stick, cutlery, vases and ceramic fruit bowl.

Our need for authenticity is a longing deep inside all of us to express and be valued for who we are without the need to hide or contort our true nature into something that conforms to society's rigid standards of acceptability. At the same time, our deep desire to be accepted and valued by others, in a society that enforces a very narrow view of what is desirable and valued, can leave us with seemingly little choice but to conform to the expectations put on us.

Creating our sense of self based on what current societal norms demand of us rather than deep and authentic internal pulls, can leave us with little felt sense for who we are and what choices would lead us toward or away from a sense of wholeness. This lack of connection with our own deep desires leaves us vulnerable to judging our self-worth according to society's standards and comparing ourselves to those around us based on pre-prescribed standards and measures.

This need to compare ourselves to others becomes fundamentally ingrained into how we generate feelings of self-worth. Even as we recognise that the positive feelings of self-worth attained by each new tick on the list of how our lives ought to be, is transitory and immediately subsumed by the next step on the ladder, the lack of connection to our own true desires leaves us with seemingly little choice but to follow what others are doing. We begin to value our achievements in comparison to others, and our desires become completely contingent on what those around us are striving for.  

While conformity moves us away from a connection with our authentic selves, it does provide a choir of voices that will help to reinforce that we are on the ‘right’ path every time we feel a tinge of doubt. Building a more authentic relationship to ourselves, driven by our own wants and needs, can be deeply uncomfortable when our choices fall out with the narrow band of society's idea of what is acceptable or desirable.

As most of us are not taught to sit with discomfort or uncertainty, the need for validation from others that we are on the ‘right’ path, either overtly or through emulating their choices, can be an irresistible pull.

As we open up to seeing life not as a linear progression but rather a colouring in of the canvas that forms our unique lived experience, the futility of comparison becomes increasingly obvious. Comparison and looking to others for the answers of how we ought to spend our unique existence makes no sense because there is no end-goal to be attained. Ultimately, at the end of life, every single one of us will finish in the same place. Recognising this truth allows us to begin to celebrate the multitude of different roads we can take to get there allowing ourselves to cultivate and nurture our individuality rather than stifling its existence through comparison and rigid enforcement of societal norms.

What’s more, cultivating individuality does not need to come at the expense of cultivating deep bonds to the people and world around us. Our differences can enrich our lives serving as points of curiosity and inspiration rather than as points of contention. They can be reflections of the rich possibilities our individual choices open up for future generations rather than invalidations of others’ choices. We can be free to cultivate and express our unique preferences without losing concern for the impact our choices have on others.

This integrated individuality, one where we cultivate a deep sense of ourselves while honouring the rights of others to freely do so as well, is an aspirational future. Our uniqueness and differences are not threats but opportunities. And in this light, there is nothing to be gained from comparing where we are and what we have to those around us. Authenticity is nurtured through the practice of listening to our own internal feelings, needs, and intuitions and is all but drowned out by chronic deferment to the world’s expectations of us.

To live in a time where the opportunities to make free, authentic choice are increasing in more ways than ever before is one of the great privileges of our time. While the pressures of social conformity are real and powerful, they are not the same as real sanctions endured by the many previous generations that came before us. This privilege is ours to preserve by making the greatest possible use of. 

In a recent interview, I was asked to state what my prediction for the next big trend in interior décor would be – my reply was individuality. As our possibilities expand and the range of what is acceptable and tolerated grows, so too will our desire to create spaces that reflect this diversity. My feeling is that trends will become increasingly irrelevant as people continue to focus on making their homes their own. As our individuality becomes not only accepted but welcomed and celebrated, our homes will continue to grow in diversity reflecting our unique preferences and the uniqueness of the lives that we lead. The idea of some external source setting the next big trend and telling the rest of us how our homes should look and feel seems increasingly absurd to me. Our spaces should serve our own needs and be reflections of our own preferences and diverse ways of living.

As more of us begin to free ourselves from the stifling bonds of conformity and begin to embrace our individuality and unique choices as a cherished and enriching part of our lives we will begin to see fewer and fewer ‘trends’ emerging. We all get inspiration from what we see around us, but the pressure to conform will start to dissolve as what is acceptable continues to expand. In this light, I look forward to watching our home spaces become increasingly individuated too. Homes will continue to evolve as reflections of the lives that have been lived within them and the ways in which those lives have shaped the preferences and tastes of the people who reside in them. This will be a beautiful enrichment for us all.

Images above show our Hand Dyed Velvet Cushion Covers in Vault Blue and Leaded Glass, hand Forged Copper Cups and Stacking Cups (also used as a vase), Classic French Table Glasses, Hand Forged Copper Cake Mould and Bundt Cake Mould, Hand Forged Copper Kitchen Rail, Pallares Solsona Professional Kitchen Scissors, Copper Kettle, Handmade Linen Kitchen Towel in Taupe Grey, Shuro Palm Hand Broom, Handmade Fluted Utensil Holder (more stock arriving soon), Stone Washed baguette Flatware Sets, Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters, Hand Carved Black Walnut Cutting Board, Pallares Solsona Kitchen Knife, Handmade Fluted Dinner Plates, Side Plates, and Soup Bowls, Hand Carved Condiments Spoon and Brass Coffee Pour Over Stand.

For most of human history, the majority of people on this planet had to contend with never having quite enough. Resources were scarce and difficult to acquire, and most people had to make do with very little. In many parts of the world people still live this way today. However, over the last several decades in the West, many of us have come to struggle with the opposite problem. Instead of never having quite enough we are overwhelmed by choices, options and things.

When reading A History of Interior Design by John Pile and Judith Gura, I was struck by their note that during the seventeenth-century massive storage cabinets came into use because built-in storage had not been a part of the architecture of the houses that had been built up until then. The authors noted that “such pieces became important as wealth made possible the acquisition of much clothing and objects of every sort”.

Today, whether a home has built-in storage is one of the most frequently asked questions during home viewings as most Westerns have come to possess a large number of belongings. This shift over the last few hundred years from homes having no storage to homes never having quite enough storage has been a transition that impacts us and our planet in a number of different ways.

I know that those of you reading this blog are more than aware of the impact that over-consumption has on our environment. But beyond the urgent need to address this habit for the sake of our planet, the problem of too much choice and too many things also has an impact on our daily lives.

We have more choices than any humans have ever had before us. While this can be viewed as, and indeed is, a blessing in some sense, in other ways the options available to us are so numerous that making decisions has become time-consuming and overwhelming. From spending time searching through the many choices for just the right item at the right price to reading reviews to making decisions between the many almost identical products is something most of us have had to contend with on more than one occasion. Too much choice can also leave us feeling dissatisfied once we do ultimately make a decision, knowing that many similar options were also within reach and questioning whether we did make the best decision.

Another common feeling that results from having too many options is a feeling of frustration and ultimately apathy rather than inspiration. It is not uncommon for people to decide to take on a project like decorating a spare room in their home only to be faced with so many options that the project quickly starts to feel draining. This can lead to the effort and time feeling like too great an investment in our busy lives and the project getting put on the back burner or abandoned.

As humans, we have evolved to keep seeking, collecting, and acquiring. Our evolved brains and bodies were created for a world that never quite provided enough. A drive to continuously seek out more would have been a particularly useful survival mechanism at a time when our reality constrained our desires. But in modern times, when plenty has tipped over into too much, we find ourselves struggling with an entirely different issue we are not evolutionarily equipped to cope with: how do we develop the new skill of being selective during a time of increasing options and an overabundance of choices?

New York based graphic designer Jessica Walsh has often shared that she believes that one of the greatest ways to foster creativity is imposing constraints. She has not only become one of the most influential graphic designers of the last two decades through her innovative illustration, design and art direction work but is also a successful business owner and educator with numerous creative side projects like her 2014 project 40 Days of Dating and 12 Kinds of Kindness.

When asked for tips by aspiring designers and business owners on how to find creative inspiration or get over creative block, Walsh has emphasised again and again that constraints are one of the best ways to foster a creative, original and personal approach. She writes that “when the possibilities are too open, you end up drowning in options and feeling lost about what to do. Constraints are an excellent way to form a unique creative style. It’s a technique often used in writing, for example, Dr. Seuss would only write his books with 30-120 words, which gave them a strange and unique vocabulary style people grew to love. Many of the best illustrators, filmmakers, artists, musicians also work within their own unique constraints”.

So while an insatiable drive for more has historically been what has helped us to survive, what will help to get us through this next phase will be a shift towards a more conscious and mindful process of careful selection in a time of plenty. By creating self-imposed constraints, we can begin to shed some of the overwhelm from living in a time of too many choices.

When it comes to creating our interior spaces, this technique works beautifully not only to prevent overwhelm but to create more coherent and aesthetically pleasing spaces. The limits we impose on ourselves will serve to draw out our creativity and make the results more unique to us.

We are all constrained by certain obvious limits such as budget which will rule out many options from the very beginning. But somewhat counterintuitively, adding additional self-imposed constraints can feel freeing and empowering in a way that budgetary constraints often don’t.

From limiting the colour pallet we are prepared to consider to limiting the range or type of materials we will focus on to limiting which shops or types of shop we buy from, there are many different ways that we can set ourselves constraints within which to make design decisions. For me a rewarding aspect of this approach is that it allows us to embrace all of the limiting factors that inevitably spring up during the process of designing our homes, being able to recognise them not as frustrations but as an opportunity for creative problem solving which can ultimately lead to a more original and individual solution.

This style of thinking is a shift from our evolutionarily evolved intuition that more choice is better, toward a truly creative way of engaging with our decision-making. The more we can learn to restrain our minds the more creative and original we push ourselves to become.  

At a time of too much, where the abundance available to us is harming not only our planet but also our own mental wellbeing the new skills of selection, restraint and self-imposed limitations will serve not only us and our creative projects but also the wider world around us.

Images show our Handwoven Cotton Cushion Covers in Plain Stripes and Traditional Stripes, Hand Forged Copper Stacking Cups, Handmade Linen Napkin Sets in Off-White, Stone Washed Baguette Flatware, Classic French Table Glasses, Shura Palm Broom and Shuro Palm Hand Broom, Copper Kettle, Hand Forged Copper Bunt Cake Mould and Hand Forged Copper Cake Mould (coming very soon), Shuro Palm Trivets, Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters, Handmade Fluted Side and Dinner Plates, Handmade Fluted Utensil Holder, Natural Dish Brushes, Tawashi Brush, Brass Coffee Pour Over Stand and Handwoven Waffle Linen Kitchen Towel in Organic Cotton.

In those moments where we are able to create this pause, we allow the magic contained within it to break open, dusting its mystical benefits onto the way we relate to ourselves, others and the world around us.

Intentionally pausing opens up a space before our reaction or response. This space creates a moment for that first reactive wave of emotion to move through us rather than capture and consume us.   

Within this space there is room for calmer, clearer thinking and feeling through the distance created between the antecedents and our behaviour. The magic that is opened up and released through that pause is the ushering in of a new moment – one in which we are free to choose our response rather than being beholden to an impulsive reaction.

If there is anything that can help us along on this difficult journey of facing up to the many problems our world is currently confronted with, it is going to be our collective capacity to sit with the reality of our challenges and to manage, rather than be taken over by, the intense emotions that are the natural response to facing things as they really are.

Unfortunately, the culture of speed that has reigned with a chokehold over the past few decades allowed little room for such pauses despite them being essential for the wellbeing of individuals and the wider world.

What happens when we start to reclaim this space? When we intentionally begin creating a pause that allow us to stop and notice? How might our reactions be different when we linger before responding? How do our feelings evolve when we give ourselves small and large breaks that serve as a space from which to reflect on and integrate what we feel? 

In the aftermath of the pandemic, the spell of speed seems to finally be breaking. So many more of us now recognising the immense benefits contained within the willingness to allow ourselves that pause in a multitude of different situations.

Over the last two years, we have paused to reflect on how we feel deep within ourselves away from the distraction. We have paused to listen to and get to know our bodies more closely, to really feel what they are signalling to us. We have paused in conversation with one another. And we have paused to revaluate and make those big decisions so many of us have been making in our lives.

While mindfulness is the essential component to creating these pauses, our homes too can be small facilitators for fostering this space within our lives. A place to retreat away from the sway and influence of others in order to allow for consideration before responding. A place to hide away in order to be able to deeply connect to our own feelings. A place to rest and recharge so that we can generate the strength to bring our most thoughtful selves into our pause. 

The weight of the challenges we collectively face can feel like such a heavy load to carry. There are no simple solutions or quick fixes and that can be hard to sit with. Being confronted with that reality, and being willing to take it in, can feel overwhelming. When we ask ourselves what we as individuals could ever really do to make a meaningful difference, one answer lies in mindfully taking more pauses. The magic contained within them is not a luxury but an essential tool for approaching challenges from a place of thoughtful consideration rather than reactivity and fear.

Images above show our Handwoven Organic Cotton Towels in Ecru and Handwoven Striped Organic Cotton Towels in Ecru, Heritage Brass Water Mister and Hand Forged Copper Stacking Cups. 

As so much of what held our cultural narratives together fell apart and so many elements of the way we lived our daily lives fell apart, it was as if through the chaos and shifting tides we were granted permission to appear slightly less put-together and to try less hard to present some polished version that did not show the flaws that are a necessary part of the creation process.

As our world entered its forced slowing, it felt as if we too slowly started to grant ourselves permission not to rush through to some imaginary end-state or state of completion but instead to linger in the process and take a little more time than we used to. In many ways the question of what we were all rushing toward became more pressing and the answer more elusive than before. What in fact was that desired end-state we needed to get to and what was the need to get there so quickly?

Loosening the grip of the need to present as complete as well as allowing ourselves more time has begun to foster a different way of relating to most of what matters in our lives – our work, our free time, our homes, our relationships to others and to ourselves.

Rather than attempting to present a perfect, complete end-state, we seem to have become more accepting of, and interested in, the slow evolving process of unfolding with all of its messy transformations. Rather than only admiring what was 'complete', both in ourselves and in others, many of us have become curious about the process. And with this gentler curiosity in ourselves, we also became curious about the imperfect process of everyone else around us. It’s as if showing our working process with all of the mistakes, errors and wrong turns inherent in getting something right became not only acceptable but desirable.

When it comes to the creation of home, this slow, imperfect, evolving process has been something I have admired as an approach for some time (you can read more here and here). Swapping the rush to the big reveal, with every last detail perfectly in place, for a slower approach allows for a more thoughtful unfolding of the spaces in our homes to occur. This unfolding can occur alongside and in support of our lives rather than attempting to have everything in place  before life in our home has even begun.

In his book ‘The process of creating life’ , architect and theorist Christopher Alexander discusses a way of creating, full of freedom and a joy of spirit, which takes place through the simple, stepwise process of adaptation that unfolds one step at a time. Each element is introduced or transformed bit by bit and always in accordance with everything that is already there. Alexander emphasises that the “rough, rambling quality of so much that is good in the environment, comes from the light-hearted, yet profound adaptation which such a simple stepwise process encourages, and which a more formal or controlled design process cannot achieve.”

I take these ideas to heart when considering the process of creation and design. One thoughtful step at a time, always assessing how each new step can enhance all that came before it and the life that will be lived within this space. There is no fixed vision of an end result, no big reveal, just one addition or change at a time. And with time, something begins to unfold that is fitting for its place and purpose.

I feel very grateful to be working in a time where the unfinished and incomplete is welcomed. Where the slow thoughtful evolution is starting to gain as much recognition and value as the rush to the big reveal.

I believe this is how homes (or work spaces or studio space for that matter) become infused with life – we spend our time in them, becoming familiar with both their structure and our own needs within them, and we add to them little by little. As our needs change so too can our spaces, flexing and shifting to accommodate the changing nature of the way we live and evolve. This process is never quite complete. If we allow ourselves to engage with our spaces slowly, thoughtfully and on an ongoing basis, they will reward us continuously by always presenting an opportunity to add or adjust something that can better meet our evolving needs.  

The time of presenting perfection seems to be behind us and it is beautiful to increasingly see a new cultural space emerging where we are free to engage with and share the realities of an unfolding process rather than just the polished end result.

Images above show our Heavy Washed Belgian Linen Blanket Throw in Ecru, Belgian Linen Bedding in Natural White, Belgian Linen Fitted Sheets in Natural White, Handspun Eri Silk Throw and Hand Dyed Velvet Cushion Covers in Alleen, Easel and Bondegard.

I remember listening to a story about a soldier returning home from the front lines during World War I. He was returning home for a brief visit before being redeployed. He reported on the impact that visiting a museum of art had had on him. As he walked around the museum surrounded by the masterpieces, he felt tears well-up in his eyes. Never had he experienced the beauty of art in the way he was experiencing it then in contrast to the horrors of war he had just witnessed. Never before had art and beauty moved him so deeply and offered such a feeling of redemption. It was not just beautiful it was healing in a way he had not experienced before.

In times before the modern era, beautiful, awe-inspiring spaces were regularly created for the general public, offering a place of solace and inspiration. From the breath-taking beauty of places of worship to grand public buildings such as libraries, universities or train stations, historically, beautiful public spaces were created with a reverence for the way that our surroundings impact our daily lives.   

But following the simultaneous rise of modernism and individualism in Western societies, this focus on the beauty of communal spaces waned. At the same time, modernism severed the ties to traditional ways of creating that had come before and the new minimalist aesthetic removed most traces of a storied past from both objects and interiors. Replacing natural living materials used in traditional handicrafts with uniform and un-aging ones such as glass and plastic, the modernist aesthetic aspired to create a sort of vacuum into which each individual could project their own desired identity. Spaces moved away from inspiring minds and guiding hearts to offering a blank canvas for people to invent themselves within. 

Taken to its extreme, the creation of a blank space for individuality to arise from can also result in a loss of a clear sense of self. Making reference to the writing of the wonderful political philosopher Hannah Arendt, in his work ‘The Disappearance of Rituals’, philosopher Byung-Chul Han speaks of the stabilising force that the objects in our lives can have. According to Han and Arendt, the objects in our lives stabilise our own, ever-changing identity and sense of self through their sameness. It is the durability of the objects, and in turn their enduring role in our daily lives over years of accompanying us, that stabilise our sense of self.

It can be extraordinarily difficult to create a stable sense of self when everything around us is in constant flux. Untethered from the grounding effect that the constancy in our physical world offers, dizzied by the seasonally updated carousel of trends, and surrounded by things devoid of signs of age and unaltered by the passage of time, we can feel uprooted, adrift and lacking in a clear sense of self.

What the emptiness of modernism did was to create a sort of blank slate, that cleared the way for a multitude of aesthetic principals and styles to become popularised in a kind of eclectic free for all. While enriching our lives in some way, unfortunately in other ways, this acceptance of variety coupled with the growth of capitalism and our intrinsic desire for the new, led to many traditional craftsmanship-base production processes being replaced by mass-production. Trends and a throw-away culture replaced quality and longevity and with it, much of the sense of stability we gained from our physical environments.

So many of us have a deep yearning to spend time in beautiful spaces. In today’s world much of that focus has moved into our private spheres with our homes being the primary spaces where we are free to express our needs and preferences and with them define and stabilise our sense of self.

In her book titled ‘William Morris and Morris and Co’ written about the work of the British designer, artist, writer and activist associated with the Arts and crafts movement, Lucia van der Post asserts that Morris had a deep intuitive understanding of the importance of home for our daily lives. She notes that “it is [his] instinct for warmth, homeliness and fellowship, and how these [traits] can be fostered by decoration, that was his real gift”… “Today we require that our furniture and decoration, far from aspiring to the condition of blankness speak to us openly of our hopes and desires, our dreams and our memories”.

The question that has arisen for our time is how we can make purchasing decisions that will both infuse our spaces with a warm soulfulness while also beginning to move us away from the hyper-capitalist values that have dominated purchasing over the last few decades?

When I think about these questions, quality and longevity are front of mind. Following several decades of throw-away consumption, many of us feel an intrinsic need to build a more stable relationship to the objects around us more in line with the relationship that Han and Arendt spoke of. By purchasing well-made items that can stay in use for years to come, we create an opportunity for the physical objects in our daily lives to reflect back to us a more stable sense of ourselves.

From fingerprint marks that create a patina that can only be achieved over years of use, to a well-worn fabric that is softer to sleep in after years of use than it was when we first acquired it, these sensual experiences can only be created over time and only if the products that we buy can withstand daily use over years or even decades.

In the book ‘The Beauty of Everyday Things’ Soetsu Yanagi writes “we no longer look upon objects as we used to, which is undoubtably due to their poor quality. In the past, everyday objects were treated with care, with something verging on respect. While this attitude may in part have been a result of the scarcity of goods in past times, I believe it principally resulted from the honest quality of their workmanship and the fact that the more an object was used, the more its beauty became apparent. As our constant companions in life, such objects gave birth to a feeling of intimacy and even affection…the careless way things are made has robbed us of any feeling of respect or affection.”

Yanagi, Han and Arendt are all highlighting the same basic point when they talk about the constancy of the objects in our lives, namely that their presences and integration into our daily tasks offers a stabilising force that is lost through the seasonal replacement of things for new trends. And they also highlight the important role that quality, craftsmanship and beauty play in fostering the formation of this relationship. If objects are not built to last, being able to withstand daily use, it becomes impossible to keep them in our lives. If they are too cheap to repair and too easy to replace, we simply cannot keep them for long enough for their stabilising effect to take root. 

I would like to take the time here though to highlight that these ideas are aspirational ideals not rules to be beholden to. We all want to live in beautiful surroundings, but we are also all constrained by the very real restrictions of time, money, and attention or capacity. While drawing our attention to these ideas can be a helpful way of guiding our thinking and decision-making processes, when applied too rigidly these values can easily begin to feel restrictive, punitive and impossible to reconcile with the reality of our daily lives.

If any of the discussion above feels relevant and meaningful, I would encourage that the values of quality, craftsmanship, beauty and longevity be treated as beautiful ideals that can guide our decisions rather than rules that restrict them.

In this same gentle spirit we are inspired and guided by the values of quality and craftsmanship in our own product curation for the shop. We pay close attention to the materials, craftsmanship and production that make objects aesthetically appealing and able to withstand the test of time, mellowing and softening with time and use rather than becoming unusable.

Our copper products are a beautiful example of these values. Whether it is our Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters and our Copper Kettle which are handcrafted in Japan or our Copper Cups and Copper Cake Mould and Copper Bunt Cake Mould, crafted in the Northern Italian mountains by three generations of copper-craftsmen working side by side, all have been created to exceptionally high standards allowing them to stay in use for decades to come. What’s more, with such care and attention to detail, each object will execute the function it was created for perfectly, making their daily use a joy.

For example, our copper kettle has the tiniest curve on its spout allowing it to pour perfectly without dripping. Similarly, the selection of copper over silicone for our beautiful cake moulds means that your cakes will cook perfectly and evenly (even if you are not an expert baker) through the superior heat-distribution that copper offers over other materials. At the same time, the moulds are so pretty that they are perfect for displaying on open shelving or hanging on the wall using the loop provided. Finally, the unique patina that forms on all of these copper products through years of use, cannot be recreated through anything other than time. It is the careful attention to all of these details in the selection and creation of these simple kitchen tools that makes using them a joy for years to come. Their regular use over time will infuse them with a worn soulfulness and their constant presence in our lives ultimately begins to offer that unique stabilising effect that Han and Arendt speak of in their reflections.   

Images above show our Hand Forged Copper Bunt Cake Mould, Copper Kettle, Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters, Handmade Linen Kitchen Towel and Napkin Sets in Off-White, Handmade Fluted Soup Bowl, Dinner and Side Plates, Stone Washed Dessert Flatware Set and Cake and Pie Server, Classic French Table Glasses, Hand Carved Wooden Coffee Scoop, Shuro Palm Trivets, Brass Coffee Pour Over Stand, Heavy Washed Belgian Linen Tablecloth and Shuro Palm Hand Broom.

Bright, stimulating colours can create a buzz of excitement. From the energizing beauty of the natural world in vivid technicolour to delightful interiors created in multiple bright hues, colour is fun, stimulating and full of life.

I’ll always remember how I felt sitting inside the beautiful bar Marilou in New Orleans. The bright red walls, the animal print patterns, the colourful velvet armchairs - every last carefully selected and brightly coloured element in that space contributed to creating a feeling of decadence, daring and excitement. 

And while spending time in a vibrant and colourful room can be fun and stimulating, muted and neutral colours can move us in the other direction, creating instead a feeling of inner peace and calm.  

Simple, neutral colours have been used in interiors for as long as we have been decorating. In his blog Building Conservation, historic building redecoration and paint expert Edward Bulmer describes the use of a category of pale neutral colours referred to as ‘Stone’ that were popular in traditional and historic decorative schemes. Stone was an umbrella term for whites mixed with various earth pigments that resulted in pale neutral colours ranging from off-white to beige. Bulmer highlights that Stone colours played an important role in the democratisation of interior decorating schemes across the social scale. The pigments required to create these neutral tones were commonly available making the Stone colours very affordable. Bulmer points to the enduring appeal of these neutrals that has spanned from their popularisation during the Georgian period through to today: “the communal spaces of high-status buildings are still often [decorated] in a tinted white and the popular predilection in selecting a colour is still to choose a variant of white tinted with the equivalent of earth pigments.”

In her book about the highly influential designer, artist, and writer William Morris, Lucia van der Post points out that in spite of Morris's abundant use of colourful tapestries and flowered wallpapers the designer chose to use wall colour with restraint, preferring to paint walls in monochrome rather than bright colours. “One of the most influential innovations in the later period of Morris’s reorganized business, Morris and Co., was the practice of painting walls white. White panelling was to become almost a trademark of the Arts and Crafts house, though in-keeping with Morris's preference for muted, natural colouring it was probably a rather milky white, a sort of limewash, rather than the titanium white we often see nowadays”.

Neutral colours have had enduring appeal in interior decorating precisely because they provide a versatile base layer, opening up the widest array of decorative possibilities. Neutral colours are forgiving, accommodating and easy to live with.

Above and beyond the ease and simplicity of decorating that muted and neutral colours offer, they also have a soothing and calming effect on our mood making them ideal for use in private spaces. Our homes are places where we go to recharge and recover from the stimulation of the public realm and the colour schemes we select for our private spaces can either contribute towards  enhancing these feelings or detract from them.

While colour trends come and go, the enduring appeal of neutrals has stood the test of time, securing their longstanding position as one of our most beloved decorative choices. And while their use might be common it is nevertheless possible to create unique and intriguing decorative schemes in neutral colours by selecting wall paints and objects from high quality niche brands rather than their high street counterparts. As we build on these neutrals by layering texture, pattern and other colours we can begin to create rich and appealing interiors that are calming, soothing and easy to live with while still being simple and flexible enough to leave room for our decorative schemes to grow and evolve.

Wall colour in this room is Khadi by Atelier Ellis. 

Images above show our Grey Striped Belgian Cushion Covers and Tan Striped Belgian Linen Cushion Covers, Safari Daybed, Kapok Safari Daybed Mattresses in Plain Stripes and Traditional Stripes, Handwoven Cotton Cushion Covers in Plain Stripes, Handspun Cotton Cushion Covers, Handspun Eri Silk Throw, Handmade Fluted Fruit Bowl, Classic French Table Glasses, Heritage Brass Water Mister.

Images above show our Handspun Cotton Throw, Handspun Cotton Cushion Covers in Ecru, Pallares Solsona Kitchen Knife, Handmade Fluted Utensil Holder, Bowls, Side and Dinner Plates and Berry and Fruit Bowls, Hand Carved Black Walnut and Sweet Gum Cutting Boards, Shuro Palm Hand Broom, Hand Carved Black Walnut Spatula, Shura Palm Broom, Hand Forged Copper Cups, Brass Coffee Pour Over Stand, Handwoven Waffle Towel in Unbleached Organic Cotton, Stonewashed Baguette Flatware Set, Copper Kettle, Shuro Palm Trivets, Handmade Waffle Linen Kitchen Towel in Taupe Grey, Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters, Heritage Brass Water Mister and Frame for Life book by Ilse Crawford.

This year past, along with the months that blurred into it from the year before, has changed us in ways that would have been difficult to fathom through the lens of the lives we led prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. The impact of the events that have unfolded on an individual, community, and on a global scale, has been deeply felt by many of us, and the extent of their consequences will continue to reveal themselves over the coming years through the long process of reflection and integration necessary for an event of this magnitude.

During the last year, as life became heavy, saturated with the weight of a reality we had little control over, some of us opted not to look away or distract ourselves from what was occurring. Instead, those who dared to stay present and use this strange time to confront all that was arising, are allowing ourselves to be transformed through the process of reflection and reevaluation. 

In this small space of quiet, as the year draws to a close and the new one has not yet begun, we are granted a temporary sanctuary from which to look back over the events that have unfolded with a rare kind of spaciousness between our reflections and the emotions bound up with them. Looking out from within this quiet space, the bigger picture can come into focus a little more clearly, helping us to recognise meanings that often remain obscured.

Human beings desperately yearn for certainty. We seek roadmaps and way finders for how to move forward so as to ensure that everything will work out in the end. But 2021 brought with it a flood of unpredictability. It forced many of us to confront and sit with the reality that there is no certainty and the roadmaps we use are mostly individual anecdotes rather than universally applicable truths. 

In this awe-strikingly complex universe in which we play such a tiny and trivial role, that can give us the impression that we don’t matter, and nothing matters, how can we learn to move through the world with the feeling that we are being guided along our own path? What steady ground could we possibly find to stand on within the continuous turmoil of constant change?

Reflecting on the year past has led me to believe that the one true north we have is our attention. This powerful tool is the only reliable guide we have for filtering our experiences and trying to make sense of the impressions that immerge through the distorted and unreliable lens we have on reality.

In a world of incessant distractions that harness the power our primal fears and desires have over us, and a culture that promotes speed and comfort over substance and meaning, honing the skill of deep attentiveness is the only safe haven we can assure for ourselves.

To be able to attend to how what is going on in the world around us, relates to and impacts what is happening in the world within, is the most powerful tool we can cultivate for understanding how to navigate the complexities of being human.

There are no definitives on how to live a good life and there are no certainties that any of the wisdom handed down through centuries will resonate within the unique  reality of our individual consciousness. But a concerted and steady investment in sharpening the tool of our attention, both the gaze that looks outward and the gaze that looks within, offers a way-finder honed to our own circumstances.

When we learn how to feel what is going on inside us without pushing anything away or distorting it, at the same time as sharpening our ability to observe what is going on in the world around us, we begin to discover a self-reflective path to meaning that is unique to us. Shielded from societal pressure as well as the immense force of our own defence mechanisms, we can begin to make truly free choices rather than ones imposed on us by society or the trappings of our past.

All lineages will eventually come to an end, stars will burn out, and galaxies will fade. In a world where everything will eventually cease to be, what meaning could we possibly give to this briefest of moments that we spend here on earth?

In his book titled ‘Until the End of Time,’ the physicist and mathematician Brian Greene turns a reflective gaze onto this complex and moving question that has haunted humanity ever since we became aware of our own mortality.

If we look far enough into the future, he explains, all life and conscious awareness will cease to be. In a universe governed by entropy where a gradual decline into disorder is inevitable, it is the fleeting moments of order, like the one that we have been born into, that are the rarity. To find ourselves at a point in time where the universe is able to support life, and with it, the emergence of a self-reflective consciousness, is nothing short of a miracle.

On a cosmological scale, this window of time where the universe is home to consciousness, is tiny and transient. In the vastness of lifeless matter, maybe our self-reflective consciousness, along with all the pain inherent in the awareness of our own finitude, is one of only a few chances the universe will have to perceive itself. The notion that the universe has but a fleeting few opportunities to think and feel, with all the pain, wonder and beauty that arise through self-awareness, is a wondrous realisation moving enough to bestow the beautiful shimmer of meaning onto our finite existence. Our great purpose in life, the meaning of it all, may simply be to be aware. The joys and the sorrows, the grief and love and all that we endure have increasing meaning the more we allow ourselves to feel them.

In their moving book ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ which psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom and his wife, historian and author, Marilyn Yalom wrote together as they faced their inevitable separation through her terminal illness, Irvin Yalom evokes Nabokov’s powerful image of our existence being but a “crack of light between two eternities of darkness”. What more poignant way could there be to spend this split second than to feel it all, with increasing awareness and commitment to take in all that we can, for every moment that our fragile hearts can endure?

Image shows our Safari Daybed, Kapok Safari Daybed Mattresses, Handwoven Cotton Cushion Covers in Plain Stripes, Extra Large Handwoven Cotton Cushion Covers in Plain Stripes, Handspun Eri Silk Blanket, Handspun Cotton Cushion Covers in Ecru, Classic French Table Glasses, Heritage Brass Water Mister, Shuro Palm Broom and Handmade Fluted Soup Bowl.  

We are in the midst of a sea change. It isn’t always easy to feel our way around the soft and blurry edges of such profound changes. Their shape and structure often remain nebulous until years or even decades after they have occurred. But even without clear definition, this new tide is changing our cultural narratives through what were a quiet few whispers that have since swelled in number and volume resulting in a powerful choir.

These changes have been a while in the making. Their slow and steady trickle has been feeding into our stories for decades. But the events of these last two years have served like rocket fuel accelerating the pace of change into a powerful and undeniable force.

One year of slowing, hibernating and being cut off from the outside world has made all but the most avoidant among us pull back, whether voluntarily or dragged kicking and screaming, into the depths of our own inner worlds. As we have emerged and started to reunite, sharing war stories and battle scars, one thing is clear: many of us are taking these hard-won changes out into the world with us.

For all the profound and numerous transformations that people have gone through, the pandemic has also had an impact on some of our everyday habits, for example, changing people’s relationship to consumption. In particular, the spell of habitual consumption seems to have been broken for many. While consumption will no doubt remain one of the pillars of our society for a long time to come, the pandemic has for many people severed the ties between shopping as a pastime and replaced it with a desire for a more conscious and more thoughtful approach to what we acquire.

From fast fashion and rapidly changing trends to a focus on longevity, quality, and ethics, what we are looking for in the products we buy is transforming to focus on not only how the items we buy will look but what impact these products will have on our world and our sense of self.

Within the context of this transformation to a more thoughtful approach to what we buy, one of the most impactful choices we can make is to pause and consider our purchases in more detail. Breaking the habit of mindless consumption and shifting instead toward making deliberate and thought through purchases ensures not only that we buy less of what we don’t need but also that we can stay satisfied with our purchases for longer.

When it comes to cultivating a more thoughtful approach to what we buy, below is a short list of points worth considering:

Longevity – focusing on longevity is about trying to ensure that the items we own and buy stay in use for as long as possible. Purchasing items that can only withstand a few uses before falling apart is a waste of both the energy and materials used to make them as well as an unnecessary contribution to the waste we create. After reducing consumption, prioritising longevity is one of the most impactful decisions we can make. This means being very deliberate and thoughtful about what we buy, ensuring that we have considered our purchase with care. In addition to learning how to build our own confidence in our choices so that we want to keep and use what we buy for as long as possible, it is also necessary to ensure that what we buy can stay in use for a long time. The first factor is quality and understanding whether an item was made with skill, care and materials that can withstand use for years or even decades. But another important factor to consider is how the items will age and look in future. From selecting a simple timeless style that is less likely to date quickly to selecting products made from materials that do not demand pristine perfection to look good but instead are forgiving of the process of ageing and change. By this I mean materials that will mellow over time, changing but looking no less beautiful. For example brass, copper or wood all acquire a beautiful patina and fabrics like linen are not only extremely durable but also become softer with time and use.

Materials – what the products we buy are made from is an important consideration in cultivating a more mindful approach to consumption. Selecting items made from natural, sustainably produced materials over synthetics made using petroleum is one option.

But an additional factor to consider is what will happen to the item when it is no longer in use? Products that are made from mono-materials (i.e. one single material) are much easier to re-use and recycle and, if made from a natural mono-material, they also decompose more easily than items made from a complex mix of materials. A further point to consider when it comes to materials is how the products we use come into contact with our skin and what impact that has on us. Eating at a plastic table for example has a very different quality compared to eating at a natural wooden one and items that come into regular contact with our bodies such as blankets and bedding made from natural materials such as linen, cotton and wool are more comfortable, breathable and pleasurable to live in than synthetic materials.

Functionality – a truly important consideration in any purchase is does the product properly do what it was designed to do? Many modern pieces are designed predominantly with aesthetics in mind. Because of this singular focus, their functionality is at times compromised in the process. Bedding that isn’t breathable is sweaty to sleep in, towels that are scratchy and don’t absorb moisture properly or kettles that don’t pour out water properly will create a feeling of frustration in the long run no matter how pretty they are to look at.

Story – giving consideration to the backstory of how a product came into being will become increasingly important over the coming years as we become ever more aware of the impact that production has on planet and people. Who are the makers behind what we purchase? What is their production process? What do and don’t they pay attention to when it comes to making their products? Every process of creation comes with a story. Sometimes these stories are of mass-production in uniform factories and other times these stories are ones that incorporate traditions of hand-making, and skills handed down from one generation to the next. Whether it is a vintage item we discovered at a market or a ceramic plate whose maker we know the name of, items that come with backstories we are familiar with create a different feeling in us to those that we do not know.

We are changing and so are our values. This pandemic has left few of us unaltered. While there are changes far more important than the ones that have to do with what we buy, I am glad to see a more positive shift trickling even into the smaller everyday decisions we make. I look forward to those edges becoming more defined in the months and years to come and a sharper picture emerging of where we are headed and what we can look forward to as well as the new challenges that will inevitably arise.

Images above show our Textured Handwoven Merino Wool Blanket, Belgian Linen Bedding Set in Natural White, Handspun Cotton Cushion Covers in Ecru, Belgian Linen Fitted Sheets and Pillowslip Set in Pure White, Hand Forged Copper Cup, Brass Coffee Pour Over Stand, Copper Kettle, Copper Tea and Coffee Canisters, Hand Craved Coffee Scoop, Classic French Table Glasses, Hand Craved Cutting Board in Black Walnut, Pallares Solsona Kitchen Knife, Handmade Fluted Side Plate, Stone Washed Baguette Flatware Set, Firesand Crackle Glaze Dish, Hand Carved Condiment Spoon, Handmade Fluted Utensil Holder (used as a vase), Handmade Linen Napkin Set in Off-White, Shuro Palm Trivet, Heritage Brass Mister, Shuro Palm Hand Broom

As winter draws in and the nights begin to swell into daylight hours and the chill in the air hurries us indoors, most of us begin to spend more time inside. This year, many of us will be in the position to plan gatherings once again following last year’s cancelled or curtailed festive period. 

Gatherings for special occasions are made special by the feasts we prepare and the little touches that make our tables and our homes feel special. There is always a balance to be struck between effort and atmosphere in this regard. While beautifully set tables and decorated houses undoubtedly create a festive atmosphere that sets the stage for memorable gatherings, the busyness of modern life and the sheer volume of things to be done during this time of year can result in a state of tension that overshadows the benefits of the pleasure of gathering with loved ones. 

The perfect festive table setting is one that balances the tension between effort and atmosphere. Creating the feeling of a special gathering does not necessarily require a great deal of effort. A simple tablecloth and some napkins, or a small bunch of festive foliage with a few candles can be more than enough to signal to ourselves and our guests that this is an occasion to be savoured and not just a dinner to be rushed through.

A small amount of effort can go a long way towards fostering a more mindful engagement with the special occasions that punctuate our year and mark the passage of time with rituals that bind us to one another.

As the festive period draws in we wanted to share a few simple tips for creating a warm and inviting festive table:

• Nature as décor – the simplest way to decorate a table is to use seasonal foliage. One bunch of foliage from the local florist is enough to decorate an entire table and only takes a few minutes to spread across the table or arrange in a vase. For the final touches that create a warming atmosphere add a few simple pillar candles.

• Food as décor – beautiful foods such as nuts, grapes and chestnuts provide a wonderful, simple form of décor. Bowls can be left for guests to help themselves or spread out across the table before the food is served. Once no longer needed they can be given to guests to take home and enjoy.

• Simple, thoughtfully selected colours – a limited colour pallet of 3 or 4 colours that complement each other instantly creates visual cohesion and the feeling that everything has been put together with care.

• A touch of decadence – adding a little shimmer through a few copper or brass items or adding a sumptuous fabric such as velvet or silk immediately infuses a space with a luxurious feel reminding everyone at the table that the occasion is a special one to be savoured.

• Fabric napkins – replacing disposable paper napkins with reusable fabric ones immediately creates the feeling of a special occasion. While a tablecloth is a wonderfully luxurious addition, ultimately simple textile napkins are  more than enough to dress the table.

 Images above show our Shuro Palm Broom, Handmade Fluted Bowls, Dinner and Side Plates, Hand Forged Copper Cups, Classic French Table Glasses, Hand Carved Cooking Spoon in Black Walnut, Hand Craved Condiment Spoon, Pallares Solsona Kitchen Knife, Hand Dyed Velvet Cushion Covers in Arthur’s Seat and Winter Loch, Heritage Brass Water Mister, Stone Washed Baguette Flatware Set, Handmade Linen Napkin Sets in Off-White, Handmade Linen Kitchen Towel in Off-White, Shuro Palm Trivets.

Over the centuries linen has fallen in and out of favour with shifting sentiments about value and aesthetics. In recent decades the popularity of linen has gone from strength to strength as its benefits have once again fallen in alignment with cultural sentiment and values.

At a time when so many of us are becoming mindful of our environmental impact, linen is truly coming into its own again. From being one of the more environmentally friendly fabrics to cultivate, requiring less water and pesticides to grow and producing little waste in production due to every aspect of the flax linen plant being put to use, to being an extremely durable fabric that can be used, washed and lived in for decades or even centuries, the benefits of linen are manifold and well aligned with modern environmental standards.

Linen creates a relaxed and effortless look and feel while at the same time being practical, durable and a fabric that becomes softer and more beautiful through time and use. If cared for properly, high quality linen fabric pieces can last for generations. What’s more, unlike synthetic products, linen is a natural material that can fully decompose leaving no traces in the environment.

Benefits of our Belgian linen

Our beautiful collection of Belgian table and bed linen was created to high ethical and environmental standards and was designed to last. All of the pieces are woven entirely in Belgium in a 200-year-old family-run linen mill. Each product comes with a certificate of origin that makes its origin traceable and transparent and certifies that it was entirely made in Belgium. The linen mill where the fabric is both woven and sewn into the finished product is certified CO neutral, powered by the sun and the North Sea winds instead of relying on fossil fuels.

Our New Fabric

Some of you may have been familiar with our old Heavy Belgian Linen Tablecloth, Napkins and Throw Blankets. These pieces were always among our most popular items due to their timeless simplicity, exceptional quality and durability. We are excited to now be able to offer a new fabric that is very similar to our old Heavy Belgian Linen fabric with the added benefit of being pre-washed and therefore even softer and with a slightly more relaxed look and feel.  

Our Heavy Washed Belgian Linen fabric is rustic, durable and strong while still being incredibly soft, luxurious and beautifully elegant. The colour of the fabric comes from the natural colour of flax linen and is less processed than other bleached and dyed fabrics making it not only better for the environment but also a more natural cream colour that is exceptionally easy to live with. It is a true neutral, neither too warm nor too cool, that is versatile, adaptable and serves as the perfect base for mixing and matching other colours with.

This new fabric comes as a large bed spread or throw, tablecloth in two sizes (the large size is already sold out but more stock is on the way) and napkins.

All of our Belgian Linen 

All of our other Belgian Linen pieces are woven and sewn in the same linen mill to the same high environmental standards. Our Belgian linen bedding, available in bed sets, pillowcases and fitted sheets, is made from a finer, even softer fabric that is perfect for sleeping in, while our striped Belgian linen bedding is made from a sturdy, slightly heavier fabric perfect for the winter months that is still wonderfully soft to sleep in.

As we all begin to demand more value from our purchases, looking for pieces that will stand the test of time, are produced in a fair and environmentally conscious manner and can offer flexibility, versatility and durability so as to stay in use for decades to come, quality linen is a traditional and historic material that meets the needs of thoughtful modern life with elegance and effortlessness.  

Images above show our Heavy Washed Belgian Linen Blanket Throw, Tablecloth and Napkins, Hand Forged Copper Cups, Handmade Fluted Side and Dinner Plates, Hand Dyed Velvet Cushion Cover in Arthur's Seat, Heritage Brass Water Mister, Heavy Belgian Linen Bedding Set in Stripes, Belgian Linen Pillowcases in Natural White.