With increasing regularity, one product emerges in AD‘s home tours: an imposing clay pot. In this Laguna Beach home, a pitted limestone vessel develops height and material depth in a marble-clad kitchen area, while a Provençal confit pot holds court in this Maine kitchen area. Cobie Smulders uses a terra-cotta enormity to stress an oak table that hosts a purported 27 guests in her Canadian home, and this Hudson Valley farmhouse uses Chinese ceramic as grounding decor.But no homes are
so possessed with pottery of the really massive variety as Jeremiah Brent and Nate Berkus, whose Portuguese farmhouse appears on the cover of our June issue. Over 3,000 miles from home on Fifth Avenue, the star-studded duo turned to the Alentejo area itself for their clay pieces: aged terra-cotta pots flank the entryway, a towering ribbed ceramic in olive beckons in the hallway, an enormous pot in the entry hall was found on the home itself, a glazed piece decorates a rosso antico marble table, a huge terra-cotta amphora prowls behind the dining table, and the kitchen dining area is a pottery gold mine– in specific a chalky, weathered vase that commands the entire space, teeming with branches cut from their orchard. A speckled and imposing urn was found on the property and positioned in the entry hall. Two amphoras frame the courtyard in the entryway. The ubiquity of these towering pieces talks to a new design of aspirational interior: Not one that’s
manicured, but intentional with its imperfections and attentively collected with time. I thought of one merchant immediately, who has perfected– if not created– the look themselves: Nickey Kehoe. I went straight to the source for their take on a clay statement piece.”A discovered vessel has already lived a life,”Amy Kehoe, cofounder of the eponymous brand name she started with Todd Nickey, states.”When we’re sourcing, we’re always
asking,’ Does this piece add a layer of meaning, or simply fill a rack? ‘”Kehoe states the abnormality of the piece is essential: off-kilter, patchy glazework, and a very legible human touch that makes a space feel like it progressed rather than was assembled.”That’s the quality we’re constantly chasing.”What’s altered just recently, Nickey says, is that customers are getting to the exact same conclusion themselves:”They’re not asking us to persuade them anymore.”The set suggests that our visual culture is so polished and optimized that interiors crave credibility.” Imperfection has ended up being a kind of evidence,”Nickey says.Baylor Pillow, the Mississippi-based designer behind Beep Design Co. has a comparable take: “On the whole, I think we are all too utilized to seeing tidy and pristine.”Pillow is energized by the historic context a customer is drawn to. The concern isn’t “Do you want old things? It’s which old things, and why?”