‘In our industry we share a sense of love for anything handmade,’ wrote Porta Romana co-founder Andrew Hills in a recent blogpost. ‘If you have an old piece of wheel-thrown pottery sitting on your mantelpiece, it has a kind of force field around it, and it emits its own energy. Once you know that feeling, it’s very difficult to feel the same love for anything mass-produced… and this becomes our curse.’
It’s this commitment to the vital energy of handcrafted products (despite the greater complexity in making them) that has powered Andrew’s company Porta Romana for the last 35 years. Based in Farnham, the lighting-design specialist works almost solely with local artisans, and every single piece is finished in its workshops in the little, off-the-beaten-track Georgian market town in Surrey.
There’s an in-house painting studio that finishes its pieces painstakingly, and has become known for its signature painted effects, making each one unique. The ultimate aim, as the tagline suggests, is for each piece to be be ‘treasured by future generations’.
It all started in a Victorian warehouse on the fringes of Clapham. ‘The little spark we lit in our workshop at 401½ Wandsworth Road in 1988 has been fanned into life by the support, creativity and energy of everyone that we’ve worked with,’ says Andrew of reaching this three-and-a-half- decade milestone. ‘That is a reality, and not a dream, however hard it is to believe!’ The original workshop, founded by artist Michael Haynes in the early 1970s, was full of hopeful creatives (other past tenants include artist Andrew Logan, ceramicist Carol McNicoll and portrait painter Howard Morgan). The latter, writes Andrew, ‘took up most of the first floor, and the story was he only drank champagne’.
Over the decades, Porta Romana has been added to the list of 401½ alumnae whose names are associated with British creativity. Pieces can be glimpsed in hotel interiors (they often pop up in architect Martin Brudnizki schemes; he created his own collection with the brand in 2018), film sets and art installations around the world, such as in the Royal Academy in London. Here a group of golden ‘Urchin’ chandeliers, designed by co-founder Sarah Hills, has been hanging outside the president’s office, above Shaw staircase, since 2018. A year later, artist Viola Lanari’s designs for Porta Romana were honoured by The World of Interiors, winning the magazine’s collection of the year award at Focus/19 at Design Centre Chelsea Harbour (DCCH) in London.
Now on view at DCCH, in the showroom, is a special anniversary film created by Andrew’s son, Laurie (who, incidentally, is named after screenwriter Laurie Lee). A new collection has also been launched, featuring a selection of the brand’s best-loved lighting pieces, reinvigorated in new colourways and finishes.
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