Notes from the studio

July 2026

On barefoot luxury

Why the most luxurious spaces are the ones that let you exhale.

Barefoot luxury gets said a lot around Byron Bay. Often it means expensive things arranged to look relaxed. That's not what I mean by it.

A luxurious space isn't the one with the rarest stone. It's the one that lets you exhale the moment you walk in, where nothing asks you to be more careful, more dressed, or more upright than you actually are. Teak that takes the knocks of family life and looks better for them. Linen that's meant to crease. A bench you can lean on in wet swimmers without anyone flinching.

The test I use is simple: would you take your shoes off without being asked? If the answer is yes, the space is working. Everything I choose, from material to proportion to where the afternoon light lands, is in service of that yes.

July 2026

Lennox to Bali

Two coastlines, one sensibility. The making of MOA.

Half of what I make starts on one coastline and finishes on another. The idea arrives here, a sketch after a beach walk or a proportion I can't stop thinking about, and takes physical form in Bali, in workshops where teak is worked by hand and nobody is in a hurry.

People assume the two places would pull a design in different directions. They don't. Both coastlines share the same instinct: live outside as much as inside, let materials weather, build for salt air and bare feet. What Bali adds is craft measured in decades, and a patience with timber that you can read in the finished piece.

That crossing is the whole of MOA. Designed Byron Bay, made in Bali, and each piece carries a little of both when it lands in your space.

June 2026

Komorebi, or letting the light lead

What a Japanese word taught me about a hinterland home.

Komorebi is the Japanese word for sunlight filtering through leaves. There's no English equivalent, which tells you something: we name what we notice. The home in Coorabell that carries the name sits inside a wall of green, and the light that reaches it has already been softened twice before it touches a surface.

So the design decisions made themselves, once I stopped fighting them. Nothing glossy, because filtered light dies on gloss. Timber and stone that hold light instead of bouncing it. A bath placed where the green does the work no artwork could.

Every project has one thing it's trying to tell you. In Coorabell, it was the light. The job was to listen.

See Komorebi Home →