Stellah De Ville didn’t seriously get into ceramics until around 2014. That was when she started taking classes in San Francisco’s Japantown, even though she had always felt a calling to work with her hands. “I was one of those nerdy kids who hung out in the art room all the way through school,” says De Ville. Her career has been steeped in creativity: she started out in fashion in her native Australia and eventually transitioned into interior and product design. In the wake of Covid, her journey permanently plopped her in Mexico, first in Oaxaca where she opened a store, Stellah Gallery, and embarked on a home renovation. “When life kind of opens up like that, I tend to say yes,” De Ville shares.
During those first few years, De Ville made regular trips to Mexico City and felt too strong of a pull to the metro’s vibrant design and fine art community to ignore. When she discovered a website for rental homes, she didn’t have to scroll for very long: the second listing, a classic 1930s Casona in the heart of La Roma, caught her attention. “I’m like, this can’t be real,” she recalls. The only problem was, by the time she got a hold of the listing agent, she was halfway back to Oaxaca, so she asked him if two of her friends could stop by and tour it on her behalf. One of them was so taken aback by the dreamy checkerboard flooring in the upstairs sunroom, she dropped her phone during their FaceTime call. Her reaction said it all: De Ville decided to sign a five year lease.
Because the place had been used for 12 years as an office for a film production company, De Ville’s main challenge was turning it into a home that she could live in and also host events. It had no hot water or gas; the bathrooms needed significant work, the whole exterior required a paint job; and chunks of stucco were falling from the walls. Her landlord fronted some money for the essential restorations and De Ville oversaw a few facelifts of her own, like planting a tropical garden.
Black Sideboard Attributed to Eugenio Escudero; Mirror via Paris Flea Market; Pendant, IKEA.
At the house, also dubbed Casa de Reunión, De Ville has already thrown dinner parties for 25 and pop-up art shows. “The other day, my friend did a performance of Verdi in the living room. He’s got amazing tenor,” she shares. This coming year, she even hopes to activate the house as an artist residency. Ahead, in her own words, De Ville takes us on a tour of her creative retreat.
The thing that really keeps me in ceramics is the lessons in failure; it’s incredibly humbling. Life is really bloody hard, right? We’re all conditioned to be successful all the time, and everything has to be perfect. In this house, almost every single floor is a different pattern. There’s green floors, there’s pink floors, there’s red floors. Coming from Australia, no one would do that, and yet it really broke me open in terms of how I think about color and how I could invite it in, embrace it. A massive earthquake split the [entryway] floor in half, but rather than replacing the whole thing, they just re-tiled half of it. There were still huge holes [when I arrived], so I had a bunch of replacement tiles made. | Vintage Table Attributed to Eugenio Escudero. For me, it’s really important to respect the materiality of the house. There are many terrazzo elements that are original. The stairs are original, and there was a terrazzo shelf in the [foyer] that had been broken and covered over, so I made a new one. When I went to create the terrazzo for the kitchen, I chose pink and yellow and green, trying to bring all the colors of the house into it. My friend, Alberto Franco, he’s an amazing architect, and he found these women who made all of this in their factory. They spent four days installing it. The stained glass window was existing but at some point a few of the other panels got damaged. I actually found the pieces in a storage space here. | Countertops, Concretoscuro; Coffee Maker, Gaggia; Range, Smeg; Kettle, Bodum.Because the house is so old, there is not one straight line in the whole thing. This is the little casual dining area. One of the things that I love about it is I can have all of my cookbooks in my kitchen (for once!). I found this crazy cabinet here and I love the way that the pattern is reflected back in the floor. This rug used to be in my house in California—there’s a nice interplay between the grid of the windows. | Rug via Alemany Market; Table via La Lagunilla Market; Painting (over sideboard), Janaki Lennie; Ceramics (on sideboard), Stellah De Ville;Painting (over armchair), Samantha Keely Smith.The wall tile [in this bathroom] is original. The tub is original. This basket weave flooring is all new, but looks old. I had it made locally. | Custom Floor Tile designed by Stellah De Ville; Artwork, Leigh Wells. I really wanted to use this saffron paint color on the [interior courtyard] of the house, but it just looked too saturated on the facade, so I used it in the guest bedroom-slash-office. | Tulu Rug from Turkey; Sofa designed by Stellah De Ville and made by Andrew Germann; Pillows, Maynor’s Upholstery; Paint (on walls), Comex Níspero; Curtains, IKEA.I can actually get to my studio through the primary closet, which is like a Narnia moment. Sometimes I wake up at 6 a.m. to sneak in there. I try to get into the studio every morning, do three hours, then start on my other design business I run with a good friend here where we design custom furniture and lighting, and collaborate on art pieces. My friends are like, Do you sleep? | Rug via La Lagunilla Market; Custom Black Walnut Bed designed by Stellah De Ville; Bedding, RH; Mirror, IKEA; Table Lamp via Alemany Market.
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