Plaster, stone, and why we keep saying no to chrome.

A look at the finish decisions that make an interior age with dignity instead of chasing the brief brightness of trend.

There is a shelf in our Milan atelier holding eleven plaster samples, all nominally the same warm white. Visitors laugh. Then we take them to a finished room and ask which wall they would lean against — and they always choose the plaster over the painted drywall beside it, without knowing why.

The why is touch. Lime plaster breathes, takes fingerprints gracefully, and repairs invisibly. Chrome shows everything and forgives nothing. This is the entire philosophy in miniature: we specify materials that age with the household instead of testifying against it.

“We specify materials that age with the household instead of testifying against it.”

Our palette is deliberately short. Lime plaster in four tones. Oiled oak, smoked oak, and one ebonised finish for when a room needs gravity. Honed limestone and a single dark marble, used sparingly enough that it still means something. Linen, wool, leather. Brass, bronze, blackened steel. That is nearly the whole list, and it has served forty-one commissions.

Chrome appears in catalogues because it photographs brightly on day one. In year six it shows every wipe. A brushed brass tap, meanwhile, darkens exactly where hands touch it — it becomes a small record of the household. We consider that a feature, not patina to be polished away.

Saying no is the service. Anyone can add the fashionable finish; it takes a studio to protect a client from the finish they will hate in 2030. Our proudest specification remains the one we talked a client out of.