Romanticise your crockery
The plate as poem, an inquiry.
“The home should be the treasure chest of living.”
— Le Corbusier
Dear reader,
This past week, I’ve been deep in the creative process—burrowed in the quiet corners where my next book is slowly taking shape. In fact, it feels surreal to say that I have finished it to a point that I felt it could be sent out to have eyes outside of my own upon it.
This part of the process is the kind of rhythm that asks everything of me.
But today, I’m peeking my head out from the depths to return to this inquiry we recently began together.
“The plate as poem” an Inquiry
An ode to small acts of intention.
A body of words dedicated to carefully chosen artefacts that make up a home.
A place for story.
A place where instinct gathers object…
…A quiet look at what it means to build a life worth sitting down to.
I am forever amazed by the breadcrumbs that find me while trying to write a life. In preparing my heart to dive into language and plates, I happened to stumble upon this book, this guide, this physical metaphor giving more layers to this inquiry… an entire book on collecting plates. And although this inquiry rolls deeper than plates alone, I love how it found me and gave more body to the cause.
If you missed the initial invitation, this inquiry began with a friend’s recent stay in our home while we were away. Each day, they sent us glimpses of their stay in a somewhat photographical journal : birthday cakes, toast, shells, beach light—and always, one of our plates in use. The plates we’ve gathered slowly over the years, instinctively, from different locations and seasons of making a life. Seeing them through someone else’s eyes, I was reminded that crockery—can hold more than meals. It can hold memory. It can hold story. It can hold a home and its feeling—Rick Rubin calls it “a devotional act.” And I like the idea of that.
Read here if you missed it:
And so here we are, gathering instinct, intention, and small moments of beauty, plate by plate.
Jet-lagged and slow, but a week or so ago, I found myself quietly reacquainting with our home, nesting the way I so often do after a decent stretch overseas. Shifting around furniture and objects of our everyday—some familiar, others newly arrived, among them: a new glass carafe, arriving in our absence, on the clock of our house-guests, stripey brown and weighted, a definite heirloom in the making.
The kind of piece that doesn’t just pour wine—but has an ornamental moment when also not pouring wine. It deserves a shelf.
In the residue of our travel-worn hours, with a fresh delivery of ten film rolls in tow, we let the jet lags delirium lead us—spontaneously turning toward the carafe, the light, the elegant lace curtain in our home that is the backdrop I always dreamt of, some new red socks and a lace skirt I stumbled upon in Thailand from a placed called “Super cheap cheap”. A photoshoot, some creative play in the making. I tend to let my work outplay like this—it always turns out better this way.
I love what whim (and delirium) offers to process. I love what having beauty in reach materialises to. And it’s this exact example that offers me my own insight into this act of devotion— the devotion of building rooms, building corners, building a home—not just for my lean towards the aesthetic but for what it holds and what it becomes catalyst to.
I simply love being in my home.
The older I get the more content I have become with the simple delight of being in it.
Being left to my own devices, where I tinker and play, and move things around and exist.
Beauty always within reach. Book stacks lean against walls, doubling as display for shells, vases, small treasures. The coffee table with poetry, biography, art books—an ever-present invitation to pause. And lighting: never a harsh overhead glare, only lamps and candles. A single flicker can transform an ordinary evening into something almost sacred.
Most days, within these walls, I could be anywhere: a seaside cottage in France, a sunlit flat in Georgia, a courtyard in Andalusia. My home writes its own story into my hours and wraps me in the creative process—each object whispers something important, each corner finds its way into my days.
Recently, some of you have asked for a kind of catalogue—a visual gallery into the corners of my home. You’ve wanted to meet the plates that hold the sea-worn shells, the small objects that make me pause and whisper, “I love that little corner.”
So, in this body of words, this inquiry, in the coming weeks, I will share a catalogue of the strange things I have come to love, that make my home feel like living poetry. It will be both visual and lyrical.
What I’ve learned—often to my own surprise—is that choosing these treasures is less a matter of taste and more an act of trust. My mother taught me to follow that first impulse, to move without hesitation when something speaks or insists. It’s a lesson I’m passing on to my daughters: when instinct speaks, we gather, we place, we honour—without second-guessing.
Over the years, friends have called it an “eye for curation,” but I’ve come to believe it’s simply practice—listening to the soft nudge that draws me toward colour or form, then trusting that the object will reveal its place and story in our home.
In the inquiry ahead, I’d like to share the unfolding of that practice: the subtle conversation between instinct and object and within this, I hope you’ll find permission in the instincts that are uniquely yours.
I’ll see you in the next love letter, objects and plate as poem,
xo
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Little moments. Incidental pairings. Colours that weave seamlessly together. Perfection. Love. Beauty.
I love to read your words when all is quiet. Sacred treasures. My heart smiles knowing you bless so many with your words. Thankyou for being you ✨