Porta Romana

At Porta Romana the patinas live in a recipe book, a record of tested finishes. Each one takes weeks to develop: layered colour, stippling, gold leaf. Nothing is made before it is ordered.

Andrew and Sarah Hills founded the company in 1988 in a small London workshop. The name came from a trip to Florence, where they saw the craft workshops around Via del Campuccio and wanted to do the same thing with British makers. The base is now in Farnham, Surrey, with a sculpture studio, a paint studio and a shade studio under one roof, and a separate showroom in London.

The company says roughly three quarters of the collection is sourced and made within fifty miles of Farnham, using metalworkers in Hampshire and London and glassblowers and ceramicists in Surrey. Blown glass is made with Adam Aaronson, bespoke LED lamps with Tala. The Urchin chandelier, the piece most associated with the house, was the starting point for Harris Reed's GILDED collection, shown at London Fashion Week in 2025.

Artopia carries Porta Romana in Geneva. Because everything is made to order there is a lead time, which is the trade-off for a finish applied by hand, piece by piece.