The objects in your home...
Announcing some very exciting news!!!
Good morning friends!
I’m popping in here to bid you a quick hello and, most excitingly, to let you in on the big news that… A webshop will be opening up very, very soon!!!
This has been a loooong time in the making and I am so unbelievably, wildly excited to finally bring it out into the world. You all know my love for everything handmade - in this fast-paced world where the idea of ‘more’ seems to reign supreme, I am bringing to you the Cottage Kitchen Studio. This is my bid to help us all slow down, to savour the moment and to rekindle the joy of furnishing a home with objects made by another person, with a name, a story, a passion. Not an object mass-produced in some factory in some place, in who knows what conditions, somewhere upon this globe.
Every artisan, every maker whose wares I have sourced, I will know - some more personally than others, but I will have spent some time getting to know each and every one of them as well as their way of working. They are often one-person shows, or work only with a very small team.
All products sourced for the shop are made in small batches, one at a time, by people, not machines. These are artists, artisans and they all speak, through the work they do, to a dream for a better, slower, more beautiful future. By purchasing an item from Cottage Kitchen Studio, even if just treating yourself to one of Katharine’s most beautiful, luscious bars of handmade soap, you are casting a vote for beauty, for skill and art and heart. These are precious things in a society to have and to cultivate.
There is something very special about taking the time, in the wee hours of the morning, to whip up a batch of fresh pancakes in a beautifully crafted stoneware mixing bowl, to grind your spices with a weighted pestle as their fragrance wafts up in the air about you, to pack a special picnic in your handwoven basket or make a favourite batch of jam with sun-ripened fruits in a proper copper pan.
Very rarely is the future changed by grand, big gestures. I believe that the world is mostly made in every instant, that it swells in all of those tiny, overlooked moments that add up so that a day is finally made, and weeks, and months, and years. So I believe we have a duty to make each and every moment as beautiful, as meaningful as it can be. For beauty opens up the heart, meaning helps us connect with the world around us - our family, our friends, our neighbours, that wider and grander community that is all of humanity.
A friend asked me many, many years ago, if I were a materialist. At the time, I had no idea what to answer him. Today, however, I can say that I am a materialist, insofar as we live in a material world and that objects hold the potential to anchor us more solidly in the here and now all whilst allowing our hearts and our minds to expand far beyond our own horizons.
We don’t need more, we need better. We need soul and heart and beauty and creativity.
This is my bid for all of that, for you, for me, for us.
Cottage Kitchen Studio will be opening its doors August 25th, with a special pre-opening launch on the 24th for subscribers only.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you will also be receiving a special discount code giving you 10% off your entire order - that email will be sent out on the 24th, so go ahead and make sure you’re subscribed! ;)
In the meanwhile, let me just give you a bit of a teaser of some more of the very good and beautiful things to come…
So mark August 24th in your calendars and I can’t wait to see you over in the studio!!
xx
Camille