Ercolano

Occasionally, when walking amongst the piles of stone, mounds of brick, after walking under the brave, disintegrating hulks of once vast forms in the ruins of ancient Italy, you sometimes come across a moment, a fragment in which all the flesh comes back to fill-out the sun-bleached bones of a lost world, in which the clothes, the music, the make-up, the marbles, the tiles, the murals, the smells and all the luscious flowing fabrics of a once bustling & voluptuous life now fallen silent suddenly return to transform the acres of dust into a swirling vortex of lasciviously sensuous delight upon the canvas of your imagination. They are all it takes, and they are always there, hidden in dark corners, standing alone next to a bush half covered on grass, broken, jagged, but gloriously vivid little pieces of wall that have somehow, through the millenia, retained all their layers, exquisite egyptian marble, or dreamy escapist fresco, or lashings of mosaic, or sinuous ceramics, they are pure moments of the past's freshness, joy and youth sliced into the very places of its death, and they are precious pieces of pure evocation. Ercolano is one of these that has emerged from the exquisite ruins of the recent past, a fragment of modernity that conjures a world of delight and abandon in the sensuousness of colours and materials of which it is only the tiniest, but perhaps most beautiful part.

A collaboration with Botteganove for Doppia Firma 2021, featuring Salome, an upcoming tile range.