gualala-la-la-lah ...

we found ourselves in the small coastal town of gualala for a wedding over the weekend. it's about 3 hours up the coast from san francisco (a long but pretty drive up). anywho, we certainly didn't expect to find a design shop that would fit right into hayes valley or jackson square or fillmore st, but we did! ... placewares+lyndondesign

apparently, the couple (lu wendel lyndon and maynard hale lyndon) who runs the shop have a long design history. they met in 1971 at design research, left in 1973 to open their first placewares shop (later to open another 6 shops and a catalog business) and lyndondesignstudio to design products, married in 1980, and then closed up shop in 2004. they moved back to northern california and eventually decided to re-open a single location in gualala! glad they did.

lots of fun stuff but i was most drawn to their wide selection of tableware ... (clockwise, from top left) heath ceramics ... sara paloma ... mud australia (my favorite in the store - thin porcelain, glazed on the eating side, matte stone finish on the other) ... asa selection from germany ... soule studio (by local artist aleth soule) ... bee house teapots ... showroom finland tuisku bowl ...

they also carry a bunch of other fun stuff from iittala, alessi, marimekko, joseph joseph (like their chop 2 pot), h concept and more

and another fun fact ... the owners designed a totally neat house for themselves just minutes from the store. check out the cute photo tour