Every object carries a trace of the road it travelled, the conversations that surrounded it and the hands that held it before mine and the future of possibilities. Every object gives itself away eventually. Not immediately. Usually somewhere between the third or so interaction. Sometimes it’s the underside. Sometimes the weight. Sometimes the way someone hesitates before naming a price. Collections aren’t built by buying, they are built by noticing.
This collection was never waiting in one market. It was scattered across thousands of kilometres, hidden in conversations, colours, meals, personalities and objects that, once brought together, somehow recognised each other, holding quiet conversations.
The way I source has become increasingly non-linear. I might begin a trip with a handful of fixed points; a market that’s only held once a month, a dealer I’ve known for years, or a town celebrated for a particular craft… but the rest is rarely planned. The best discoveries almost always arrive through conversation. One dealer sends me to their brother’s warehouse three hours away. A café owner scribbles the name of a village I’ve never heard of. Someone quietly insists I make a detour across the border because “there’s someone you need to meet.” I keep my itinerary deliberately loose, allowing curiosity and generosity to dictate the route rather than Google Maps. More often than not, it’s those unexpected conversations that shape the journey far more than the destinations themselves.
I also like to travel with a material in mind. Grottaglie, in southern Italy, continues to draw me for its centuries-old ceramic tradition, while places like Thiers, in central France, are defined by generations of metalworking and knife-making. Rather than chasing trends, I’m interested in understanding why certain skills took root in certain landscapes, and how those histories continue to influence contemporary makers. It’s often during these visits that new ideas for composition begin to emerge. I find myself sketching products on café napkins or discussing finishes with local artisans, because I’m invariably at my most creative when I’m surrounded by people who have spent a lifetime mastering a single material.
Sourcing has never been limited to antiques. The way a city dresses a table, the proportions of a doorway, a newly opened restaurant, or a century-old family trattoria all become part of the same visual language. I like to alternate between the newest places and the oldest, observing how different generations interpret beauty, hospitality and ritual. Those impressions inevitably find their way into the collection. Not as direct references, but as colour palettes, textures, proportions and atmosphere. I like to approach as if I am an archeologist for antiques.
Collections are never named before I leave. They earn their names somewhere on the road. Usually it’s an offhand comment that becomes a running joke, a song played too many times in the car, the colour that kept appearing from one town to the next, or an object that unexpectedly became the thread connecting everything else.
One collection has been quietly taking shape for more than a year. It began on a previous sourcing trip but never felt complete, so it waited. Every journey since has added another layer until the story finally made sense. Titled ‘Madonna, Medusa, Morena, Mariah’, it’s built around contradiction: the sacred and the sensual, mythology and modernity, devotion and desire. Much of it traces back to long days in Gozo and the South of France, where the people we met continually challenged first impressions. Conversations would
begin with Catholic iconography and end somewhere entirely unexpected. There was a wonderful irreverence to it all, an ease with contradiction that felt distinctly Mediterranean. Those encounters, along with recurring female archetypes, became the emotional thread running through the collection. Rather than referencing any one place or era directly, it captures the humour, confidence and the beautiful complexity of people who shape the journeys.
Another collection, ‘Villa Verdigris’ actually began while travelling through Normandy in the depths of January winter. I became captivated by the silhouettes of old wrought-iron gates and forgotten garden furniture emerging from the snow. Sitting stoic against the bare trees, their arms alike to trees slowly disappearing beneath fresh layers of white, the image sat with me until this trip when I unconsciously kept searching for the same feeling and naturally gravitated toward every swirled arm. Long before a collection has a name, it begins collecting its own memories. These are a few of them from this trip past.
The character
Giuseppe Fasano & Grottaglie
Address: Via Caravaggio, 1, 74023 Grottaglie TA, Italy
If Grottaglie is the capital of Italian ceramics, then Giuseppe Fasano is one of its great characters. I’d somehow managed to disappear for two years after losing his contact details, only to walk back into his workshop this summer and be greeted as though I’d left the week before. “Where have you been?” he laughed, before launching straight into espresso, stories and a tour of the workshop. Orders were collected, new ones imagined, customers wandered in demanding impossible deadlines, phones rang incessantly an Giuseppe somehow remained entirely unflustered, flirting outrageously with everyone while directing the beautiful chaos around him. It felt less like visiting a manufacturer and more like stepping into a family opera.
Seeing the first collection we’d designed together finally sitting on the workshop shelves was exciting (and inspiring). Ideas that had once existed only as sketches and conversations had become real objects. After a beer and a very odd 2 hours where nothing of note had particularly happened, we were suddenly designing the next collection, terracotta vessels inspired by Sicily, pasta, mythology and the wonderfully contradictory characters that had followed us throughout the journey.
Like so many collaborations in Italy, it began with laughter, gestures, broken translations and an afternoon that somehow ended with Giuseppe insisting on driving us around his property in a car so full of cardboard boxes there was barely room to sit, the point of said of the journey still lost on me.
The meals and the owners
Ristorante Cisterna nel Borgo, Castiglione D’Oria, Marta
Address: Borgo Maestro, 37, 53023 Rocca D’orcia SI, Italy
Ristorante Cisterna nel Borgo didn’t even look open when we arrived. The laneways were silent, and as we wandered through the stone streets of Castiglione d’Orcia, we questioned whether we’d found the right place at all. Then the courtyard appeared, tucked quietly behind old walls, and everything changed. Marta welcomed us wearing a crocheted singlet stitched together from every imaginable colour and pattern, paired with a denim mini skirt finished with a matching crocheted hem, both handmade by her mother-in-law. It told me everything I needed to know before we’d even sat down.
The menus were handwritten and covered in buttons she’d glued on herself one afternoon. The wine list looked as though it had lived on the same table for decades, all hand written. Nothing had been overdesigned; everything had simply been loved. As the evening unfolded, the courtyard slowly shifted with it. Conversations grew louder, strangers became neighbours and Marta floated effortlessly between every table, somehow making everyone feel like regulars. We stayed until the chairs were being stacked away, leaving long after everyone else had gone even the owners at their bequest.
I often think about places like hers when I’m building a collection. Not because I want to recreate them, but because they remind me that the most beautiful spaces are never perfect—they’re deeply personal. They’re layered with stories, handmade gestures and small acts of creativity that could never have been art directed. Those details stay with me long after the meal is over.
Pezzeto in Lecce
Owned by Diego, who even after we left couldn’t help but share more of his favourite venues for us to try. The antique dealer who joined us on this meal was also one of the nicest people I’ve met.
Zia Lé Panini, Polignano a Mare
Tucked away just off the well trod tourist paths, owned and run by Zia Lé, this will forever go down as the best sandwich I have ever eaten (and potentially the fastest).
Burro, Ostuni
Named after butter for good reason. This modern breakfast spot had this little Australian girl satisfied.
The drinks
1930 Cocktail Bar, Milano
The speakeasy hidden beneath MAG BAR with every detail thought of. From the intrinsic way you access the space (a theatre of sorts) to the menu of all drinkable ‘meals’ that was so unique, it had me wanting to try everything… but as to be expected I didn’t move far from the Caviar Martini. Conjured by Benji, a world class bartender. A must for Milan.
Vinicolo Natural Wine Bar, Ostuni
The city alone being one of my favourites within Italy and within its walls, one of my favourite natural wine bars ‘Vinicolo’. If you’re keen to experience the new age of Italian wine makers this is the place to do so. Staff have a great knowledge of wine and the experience of selecting your wine in the grotto was a nice touch. The carefully paired antipasto, the people watching, all make for an all round contemporary Italian experience.
The dealers
Luigi from La Mercanteria
Address: La Mercanteria – Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 34, 72017 Ostuni BR, Italy
One of the warmest experiences that didn’t involve the sun. I first met Luigi at Ostuni’s monthly Sunday market. It was the end of a relentless day—the kind where the heat blurs your judgement—and although I couldn’t stop thinking about a faded green garden table and chairs he’d brought with him, I knew better than to make decisions in thirty-eight-degree heat. Some pieces deserve a second look.
A few days later, we found him again at his showroom, La Mercanteria. We spent the morning discovering ceramics, old garden pieces and beautifully weathered objects before, almost as an afterthought, he asked, “Do you want to see the warehouse?” It’s one of my favourite questions to hear. The warehouse was where Luigi really appeared. Away from the showroom, his reserve quietly disappeared. He became playful, telling stories through gestures as much as words, pulling unexpected treasures from impossible corners and laughing every time we found something else to add to the growing pile. Somewhere between negotiating prices and loading the car, the transaction dissolved into something much more generous.
By the afternoon, we were sharing drinks together, celebrating a successful day’s sourcing. Luigi insisted he hardly ever drank, a claim that became increasingly difficult to believe as the afternoon unfolded. Before we left, he disappeared into the warehouse and returned with gifts: two wonderfully eccentric leather horses for Ella and Courtney, and an equally inexplicable little chimney ornament for me. None of us had any use for them, which somehow made them perfect. For the rest of the trip, horses kept appearing. Cast iron horses. Ceramic horses. Leather horses. Equestrian paintings tucked behind wardrobes and riding motifs hidden in unexpected places. Like so many things on a sourcing trip, it became a running joke before quietly becoming a thread. By the time we returned home, I realised Luigi hadn’t just sold us antiques. He’d introduced another character into the collection.
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