Three years ago my family built a barn in the center of a small northern California farming town called Healdsburg. We opened a lovely restaurant here named Barndiva, in honor of the small farming traditions of Sonoma County, and filled it with beautiful objects to heighten a dining experience which to this day remains committed to an exquisite, sustainably sourced menu.

From the day we opened guests have longed to take more than the dining experience home with them. From the antique chandeliers to the unusual water glasses they would ask about our designs, and for those things we didn't fabricate ourselves, whether we would share our sources.

Late last fall, when the old building next door to Barndiva ~ once the site of Healdsburg's Opera House ~ became available, we envisioned a gorgeous shop that would let us share the work of artisans who infused our lives~ young or old, alive or dead, down the road or around the world. We envisioned a unique collection that spoke to a point of view anchored, as Barndiva is, by a particular attachment to place.

For some of us shopping is a daily event, for others just a birthday or Christmas experience. No matter how much we shop, however, more and more we seem to all seek that singular moment (rare!) when we come upon an object that feels special, one that makes us want to reach out and take it home.

Sometimes the object is old and shows it, like a grape harvesting knife worn with fingered indentations in the same place where a long dead farm worker always held it. Sometimes the object is dazzlingly new, like a stunning lamp whose base and shade are created from a single piece of glass in one extraordinary blow.

Age doesn't matter to us, it's the story of the maker we seek to tell. We see the objects we sell as a chance to open the world in a good and meaningful way.

In Transylvania women take old hand-loomed cloth and re-weave it into charming table runners.

In Burkina Faso artisans make fragrant vetiver nests from the same sturdy roots of a bush that holds up their riverbanks.

In Madagascar, one village supplies us with superbly tanned leather boxes and hand rubbed horn bowls and spoons all made from the zebu, the single animal that drives their cottage industry.

In Vienna, a young American woman has re-opened a cut glass factory to bring back old world designs and techniques.

In Peru, children tend the alpacas whose wool their mothers use to create extraordinary hand-dyed and loomed shawls and blankets.

The stories these objects tell are as much about the artist as they are about the history of people in a specific time and place. This is the thread that binds Barndiva and the new shop together ~ astonishing artistic talent based upon an inspiring mix of old traditions brought forward.

What started as a simple attempt to bring the best things over from the Barndiva Restaurant has, in one short year, grown into a phenomenal collection that includes art, jewelry, textiles, lights, ceramics, glass, leather, wood and antiques, from all over the world.

Make no mistake: we only sell objects that speak to us through a sensitive use of material as it applies to ideal form and function ~ these things are very beautiful. But bringing them into your home also offers the chance to feed a vital human connection that transcends cultural differences.

The name of our shop is Artists & Farmers.

We look forward to telling you our stories.

Jil Hales
November 1, 2007