Homewares Inspired by Hunting Tools and Sea Creatures

18.07.2024 - 10:25 / nytimes.com

The central Italian region of Umbria — with its unspoiled landscapes and ancient Roman ruins — has long been a source of inspiration for artists; in the 15th century, the region even gave rise to a namesake movement that counted the Renaissance painters Pietro Perugino and Raphael as members. It’s against that backdrop that the Babini family — who also own the Hospitality Experience, a hotel group, and the Place of Wonders, a foundation dedicated to preserving traditional Italian craftsmanship — recently opened Borgo dei Conti, a 40-room resort perched on the grounds of a former medieval fortress about a half-hour drive from Perugia. Inside the property’s original neo-Gothic villa are preserved frescoes and wood-beamed coffered ceilings along with Etruscan terra-cotta floor tiling and furniture covered in fabrics handwoven at a nearby textile atelier. Between meals at Cedri, a fine-dining restaurant placed in a former (lemon greenhouse), and L’Osteria del Borgo, an all-day trattoria serving Neapolitan pizzas, guests can visit the wellness spa — complete with saunas, a salt room and an outdoor solarium — or visit the Italian-style gardens of the surrounding 40-acre park.

Walk down a side street in London’s diamond district and you might catch the scent of frankincense and agar wood as it drifts out of the showroom of Alighieri, a jewelry brand that takes its name from the 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri. “We describe it as the smell of church vaults and old libraries,” says Rosh Mahtani, who founded the company in 2014 to make heirloom jewelry. Now she’s creating items for the home, including this incense. The housewares collection, Alighieri Casa, is made up of tableware and cooking accessories with imperfect finishes. A bright, gold-plated candlestick curves into a lion’s paw — a reference to Alighieri’s best-selling lion medallion pendant, a talisman for courage — while another pair look like asymmetrical silver pebbles. Bottle openers shaped like lobsters and sea horses blur the line between ornaments and kitchen utensils; Mahtani wears one on a length of black leather cord as a necklace. Gold-plated and stainless-steel cutlery are made at a female-owned foundry in Delhi using a method called sand casting. The tactile pieces, which reference tribal hunting tools, feel precious, but Mahtani hopes that people won’t set them aside for special occasions. “Life is tough,” she says, “and most things we can’t control. But we can build rituals for ourselves at home that are beautiful. There’s a lot of comfort in that.”

While the sheer expanse of the Black experience defies easy categorization, a number of artists have focused their practice on chronicling its contours. “Social Abstraction,” a