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When Alex Tieghi-Walker tells a level in his warm British baritone, he will most for certain bear upon iii essential ingredients of life: travel, community, and food. The Berkeley, California–based writer as well as creative managing director’s multicultural, roving upbringing sparked inward him a nomadic spirit, together with all the same he easily crafts a domicile wherever he lands. (Fittingly, he has worked amongst hospitality brands such as the Ace Hotel together with Soho House Group.) No matter his adjacent goal, he always has his table ready for guests. “Almost every Sun I take fifteen people over for a five-hour tiffin, from tardily afternoon into evening, which I honey,” says the complete host.
Tieghi-Walker moved from his native London inward 2016 too was enchanted by Northern California’s mellow climate and robust food civilisation. Following stints living inward San Francisco too on a boat in Sausalito, in addition to and then at Scribe Winery inwards Sonoma, where he established the creative residency program, he was on the hunt for a longer-term place to settle that was connected to nature. When a Bay Area Craigslist search led him to a ramshackle barn covered inward wisteria in addition to surrounded by gardens, it seemed like fate.
The edifice’s facade, alongside its charming front end door too dormer window, did non prepare him for the “ancient” magic inside. Originally built every bit a temporary lodging subsequently the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the i,400-square-pes structure served as a wagon home; a garage; in addition to, inward recent decades, a real rustic living infinite (the previous tenant was a wilderness camper who slept inwards a hammock). Drawn to its raw potential, Tieghi-Walker has spent the by two years dividing the interior into rooms and sanding and replacing the floor—all with a listen to preserving the history of the home piece making it comfortable and inviting.
Much of the small dwelling’s mystical energy tin live attributed to the fact that it was constructed from first-growth redwood, a straightaway-obsolete (as well as illegal) edifice material that Tieghi-Walker describes equally absorbing audio, odour, in addition to low-cal, its rich aubergine presence “living” amongst the changing seasons (doors volition sometimes decide non to shut for a calendar month or 2). The front end end of the family, a double-top mutual surface area consisting of a sitting room as well as kitchen-dining infinite, features an 18th-century Irish dining tabular array big plenty for twenty-individual gatherings, piece the back end is carve up into a sleeping room on the bottom flooring in addition to a reading-writing loft (in addition to frequent invitee bedroom) on the elevation. This upper nest perfectly aligns amongst the central points; the sun rises through the dorsum window too sets directly inwards the eye of the glass doorway that leads to the roof. Come sundown, milk-drinking glass pendant lights reach “the gentle, focused glow of a Japanese workshop,” says Tieghi-Walker.
Set against this storied backdrop are serial of magpie collections that layer his space in delightfully strange vignettes, similar a hanging vintage gong found inward Kyoto framed past ceramic vegetables spotted in Naples and crowned alongside bunches of dried sage picked from the garden. “If I encounter something pretty when I’one thousand traveling, I’ll make anything to bring it dorsum,” he says. This instinct to fill up his “curio cupboard dwelling house” alongside global gems sourced from thrift stores, junk shops, as well as flea markets is non and so much an individual quirk as it is a family legacy. His grandparents’ home was brimming with furniture and fine art hailing from locales stretching from The Republic of The Gambia to Republic of India, each piece accompanied past a story of a place that, he says, “didn’t quite seem existent nevertheless” to a immature child.
Those tales carry on in the quilts hanging in the sitting room together with bedchamber, handmade past Tieghi-Walker’s grandmother. Complex expanses of geometric color, they are crafted from the local fabrics of the countries where she lived—tropical florals from years spent in the Seychelles inwards the sitting room; classic English language patterns from Liberty London above his bed. Tieghi-Walker has carried this art forrad through his ain growing archive of textiles, which includes 19th-century Navajo wall hangings, Bolivian wovens, together with Japanese indigo cloths. Anything that hasn’t already been turned into pillows, curtains, or tabular array runners volition one twenty-four hours become a new generation of quilts (as before long equally he masters his grandmother’sec pieced-hexagon technique).
For Tieghi-Walker, domicile is not limited to the confines of the redwood walls only extends to the gardens exterior that overflow amongst an almost entirely edible bounty, ranging from vegetables (carrots, onions, lettuce), fruits (lemons, rhubarb, figs), in addition to herbs (basil, oregano, chamomile) to edible flowers and native wild plants, similar dill as well as California poppies. Grapevines climb the sides of the building too upwardly to the roof, where a dozen beehives are cared for past a local beekeeper inwards exchange for “hive rent” paid inward dear. (“The beloved really does taste like the garden!” says Tieghi-Walker of the citrus, lavander, as well as sage notes that infuse the hyper-local creation.)
Having dedicated and then much aid merging his inextricable honey of fine art, nutrient, in addition to companionship inside his own domicile, Tieghi-Walker is making his showtime foray into bringing his unique make of multisensory storytelling to a wider audience this fall, with a popular-up experience devised inward collaboration alongside Emma Lipp, manager of food at Scribe Winery. The temporary shop, dubbed Still Life, volition accept over Lipp’second whitewashed Sonoma barn and feature objects Tieghi-Walker sourced on a recent trip to Japan. The space volition host events, such as meals amongst sake pairings (where guests function ceramics they can later convey dwelling house) as well as a workshop in which to make papier-mâché Buddha hands.
The series volition proceed based on where Tieghi-Walker travels next, amongst the destination existence to continuously celebrate different cultures through nutrient too craft. Although he one solar day intends to render to friends too family inwards Europe, he admits this small even so extraordinary habitation has stoked a longer-than-expected romance alongside the Bay Area. “There are few places on Earth that stimulate and energize inward the same mode,” he says. “The California dream is existent.”
The Goods
This storey originally appeared inward the Fall 2019 consequence of Domino, titled “The Natural Nomad.”