Artist and writer Tess Guinery believes creativity “isn’t just something we do here, but how we be here.” At home, that means keeping beauty in reach: art, objects, books, candles lit, the nice plates at breakfast and soft light throughout.
Her house, she says, has become “a series of lamps”. What began as a penchant for soft light has grown into something of a personal collecting habit. For Conversations with Creatives, she chose Helio for its curious, almost sculptural form, while Ochiba caught her with the warm glow of light seeping through its resin. Both are pieces she expects to grow old with.
Years ago, Tess read the works of John O’Donohue, who wrote about keeping a small contour of beauty in your thoughts to glimpse sideways at now and again, to help you endure periods of great bleakness and difficulty. Since then, she has kept her own little adaptation of that thought, an inner poem that goes, “Keep beauty in reach.”
Beyond aesthetics alone, having beauty in reach informs her entire day. The objects in her home lean into this idea. “How can I create a place around me that feels like a deep sigh?” Not perfection, but beautiful things, intentionally placed. Art, objects, books, pencils in jars, candles lit, the nice plates at breakfast, lamps, shells, beautiful things. Breakfast can be just breakfast, or it can be a beautiful thing. Objects give us the opportunity to take something habitually done every day and make a ceremony of it.
HOME IS colourfully multi-faceted. Home is a heavenly and earthly collaboration, home is a person, home is when I’m seated soundly in my mind, home is within the walls I call a house, home is a familiar face beholding expressions of acceptance, home is the exhale where defences need not exist, home is all the strange and wondrous little places I belong. KEEP BEAUTY IN REACH. Beyond aesthetics alone, having beauty in reach informs my entire day. I believe we were created to be around and within beauty, to be in co-creation with it, to be connected to it. BEAUTIFUL THINGS, INTENTIONALLY PLACED. Art, objects, books, pencils in jars, candles lit, the nice plates at breakfast, lamps, shells, beautiful things. Breakfast can be just breakfast, or it can be a beautiful thing. Objects give us the opportunity to take something habitually done every day and make a ceremony of it. I always think, “Why not?” And as a dear friend’s mum once said, “Why not make it beautiful?”
Home, for Tess, is part of the creative process. “It is all connected for me. Creativity, I believe, isn’t just something we do here, but how we be here.” She doesn’t believe home can be put apart from creative work. It all “seeps together, like one long curly creative line of beautiful things”, all working together to make something, say something or carry us into expression.
Her table perhaps holds this idea most closely. Her husband made it for her fortieth birthday. Early in their marriage, they decided the table would be the centrepiece of their home. “We wanted our life to gather there, and it has.” Tess writes about it often and suspects much of her poetry could be traced back to something said or felt around it.
MY TABLE. My husband made it for my fortieth birthday. Early in our marriage, we decided the table would be the centrepiece of our home. We wanted our life to gather there, and it has. I write about it often; I suspect much of my poetry could be traced back to something said or felt around it. OUR MORNINGS. I’m deeply aware of how extraordinary an ordinary morning can be. We’ve made quite deliberate choices to keep ours slow. They are precious to us, and we’ve arranged as much of our life as we can around protecting them. I can feel the difference in how we enter the rest of the day. Deliberate time to notice one another before the world begins asking all the big and wild things of us. CREATIVITY, I BELIEVE, isn’t just something we do here, but how we be here. Home is part of the creative process. I don’t believe it is something that can be decompartmentalised, or put apart from creative work—it all seeps together, like one long curly creative line of beautiful things… all working together to make something, say something or carry us into expression. I’M ALWAYS DRAWN TO THINGS THAT… feel as though they have a story.
With years of experience in homewares and design, we believe in considered pieces, artisanal craftsmanship, and spaces that feel collected over time. Our hope is to inspire and guide you in creating a home that feels layered, meaningful and entirely your own.
