I keep meeting potters, women, who have come to a career in clay quite by accident, and turned a pastime into a profession. I mentioned Paula Greif the other day, a Hudson potter who found the wheel in her late 50s. Further along our Catskills trail, I came across the work of Carolyn Duke who started pinching pots as a way to relax while raising young children. “After they’d gone to bed, I used to sit at the kitchen table and play with clay,” says the Sullivan County transplant. She and her husband, a photographer, moved to the Catskills from New Jersey over a decade ago, and live in a beautiful farm house with an adjoining barn that serves as studio to both. Duke’s work is entirely hand built, and has a crude, earthy feel that I love. “You can’t take it all too seriously,” she says. “And you have to be prepared to chuck away a lot of pots.” The bowl I bought, reddish earthenware with an aqua interior, shows he signs of its maker, finger prints and other markings that give the piece more character. It’s really quite beautiful.

This is the kind of pottery I dream of one day making. I found Paula Greif‘s work on a stroll through Hudson NY this week, only the shop was closed. So instead, I stood glued up against the store window admiring her beautiful spoons, platters and bowls for a good long while. It all started with a pottery class, “with the goal of remaking everything in my kitchen,” Greif says on her website. The artist had many creative lives before turning to the wheel, including shooting music videos and designing record covers for Madonna. “Began making bottles for my friends at old field farm on the summer weekends…got a space in a group ceramics studio in red hook, brooklyn…now living and working in a 10 foot wide house in hudson, new york.” Her work is all so simple, naive and whimisical. It’s a good thing the shop was closed — I would have snapped up every piece in the window.

I can’t imagine a prettier place to spend a summer evening than right here at Le Sirenuse in Positano. This room is pure delight, with its teal floors, dainty furnishings and travelling vines. I picture guests taking refuge here when the rain comes pouring down, smoking and talking and sipping Aperol spritzes. La dolce vita, indeed.

Honeycomb tiles in the bathroom are always a good idea. Black ones look sleek, but a colour, like sage green is softer, and a little more unique, I think. What I really love, perhaps because they remind me of a Mediterranean farmhouse, are honeycomb tiles in terracotta. There’s nothing rustic about this kitchen, but these floors are pure Toscana.