About

Pomalo.

I didn’t know until embarrassingly recently that there was a word for it.

Years ago, my husband became part of a work exchange with Croatia, near where his parents grew up. Over the years, they came here. He went there. Dear friendships were made.

By the time it was my turn to go, five months pregnant, I arrived to friends who felt like family and family who felt as familiar as if we’d spent every Sunday lunch together.

I fell in love with the way life felt there. Sitting at a café far longer than “necessary”. The landscape itself—the lush mountains, trees and vineyards, then crossing a mountain and finding the hard granite of the Adriatic. It shouldn’t all have belonged together. Somehow, it did.

Pomalo means a little at a time. Slowly. Take it easy.

I didn’t know the word then. I just knew the feeling.

Years later, we downsized into a new home and made a rule: we weren’t going to fill it just to fill it. We would wait for art, things made well, and things we actually wanted to live with.

So I started looking.

And then I kept looking.

I found things for our house. I also found things that had absolutely no place in our house but were too good to leave behind.

You can probably see where this is going.

Pomalo House grew from there.

We look for the real thing rather than the reproduction. Things made well enough to have another life, and things meant to be used. Old doesn’t have to mean fussy, and good doesn’t have to mean precious.

When we buy new, we’d rather make room for artists, makers and ideas that haven’t been done before.

We document what we can. When we can’t trace a maker, we say so.

Some things are here because of how they were made. Some because they’ve lasted. Some because they’re useful, beautiful or a little unexpected.

And sometimes, something just makes us happy.

Things don’t have to match to belong together.

We do the looking. You find what you like.