Sourcing · 29 April 2026 · 7 min
Inside our latest sourcing trip
Sourcing is mostly driving. The romantic version has us discovering a forgotten lamp in a farmhouse attic. The real version has us on a motorway before dawn with a list of addresses, a tape measure and a very clear idea of what we are not going to buy.
That last part matters more than it sounds. The pieces that make a collection are decided as much by what you refuse as by what you accept. Every trip we see furniture that is old, well made and reasonably priced, and we leave it where it is because it does not have a point of view.
Day one: Belgium
We start close to home. Belgian interiors of the sixties and seventies produced a heavier, more sculptural furniture than the Scandinavian mainstream, and much of it is still in the houses it was bought for. A cabinet with patinated metal fronts stopped us for an hour. Its owner had inherited it and did not like it. We did.
Day two and three: Italy
The long drive south is where the list gets tested. Italian dealers know exactly what they have, so the work is in looking harder than the label. A travertine table with a cracked edge was better than a perfect one two rooms away, because the proportions were right and the stone was unfilled. We bought the cracked one.
We photograph everything in the light it was found in. Those pictures never make it to the website, but they tell us later whether we were seduced by a room rather than by an object.
We were seduced by a room, not by an object. The photographs tell us so.
Day four: the drive home
The van is never full. It is a rule we made early and have kept. Coming home with space is a sign we said no often enough, and saying no is the only way a small collection stays a collection rather than a warehouse.