My Dad, Victor Lamont, was a great mentor to me in choosing this life of design. He passed away this year but his vitality and passions live on with me. He loved travel, food and his friends, and he loved to collect! He looked for traditional objects and folkart – things that exuded culture and craft. It was these things that I grew up with, that gave me a love for the surfaces and skills and feelings that arise from things that are made carefully by hand. He loved to find things that were whimsical or distressed or even broken – all had that spirit of having lived a good life.

He chose objects that were simple and raw and made from materials that were strong and that aged well; bamboo, wood, silver, ceramic, horn, shell… he lived with things from the places that he traveled to and that connected him to those places; Colombia, Nagaland, Mexico, Peru and all the far flung parts of Africa and South East Asia where he had gone in search of treasures for his business and himself. I was lucky to travel with him so many times.

The collection that is being sold in my Phuket shop is comprised of things from his house in Chiang Mai. I am happy to let them go and find new adventures with new owners. We both felt that objects are friends of the house – things that bring joy to the owners and that communicate the energy and life of the person who made them.

If you happen to be in Phuket over the holidays, please stop by for a visit. The collection will be in the shop from December 17 through January 31, 2017.