Strange Closets

Famed Italian artist and potter Alessio Tasca’s studio is located on a busy two-lane highway in the countryside outside Vicenza, but despite the fast-going traffic, people visiting Tasca or one of the neighboring shops simply pull off and park on the soft gravel side of the road. By contrast, its quiet and cool inside the [...]

Carpet and textile company Renata Bonfanti was the final stop arranged by the Vicenza Chamber of Commerce during my recent trip to Italy. The business was started by Mrs. Bonfanti herself in 1954, and she and several family members still work at their facility outside Vicenza. The building is just large enough to house every [...]

Crash. It’s pretty much the last thing you want to hear in a ceramics studio. But while snapping photos at the family-owned Crestani Ceramiche in the spectacular countryside of Vicenza, Italy, I felt the back of my leg brush up against something and then . . . crash. To make matters worse, we had just [...]

Many thanks to the Vicenza Chamber of Commerce for planning such an interesting itinerary during my recent trip. According to the website Made in Vicenza, the region boasts more than 86,000 companies, mostly small and medium-sized businesses manufacturing home goods and jewelry. If you’re a designer or boutique owner looking for quality products to differentiate [...]

There’s only so much you can do with an IPhone camera, but the light was too good, and I was too enthralled not to take a few photos when I finally logged off the computer and took a walk outside last night. As I strolled the streets of Florence near dusk, I was reminded that [...]

The Economist kept me preoccupied for more than an hour of my eleven hour trip from Chicago to Vicenza, Italy. Reading the newspaper cover-to-cover is a surefire way to keep up with world events, but very often, I also glean interesting information related in some way to interior design, and this issue was no exception. [...]

Trying to select which map of Italy to use in today’s post left me stymied, so I compromised by selecting only my favorite 18. ↔ Today’s mobile phone map applications seem almost magical, but the ultimate device of its time was the printing press, which enabled killer apps like newspapers, books and of course, maps. [...]