EMPORIO SIRENUSE'S NEW CERAMIC COLLECTION IS A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
23.04.2026 EMPORIO SIRENUSE
Emporio Sirenuse's new ceramic homeware collection is a story of cultural forces and currents that have flowed and blown back and forth across the Mediterranean for millennia.
The plates, bowls and other items in the Ànemos collection were conceived for Le Sirenuse Mare, our new beach club in Nerano. Located at the water's edge, cooled by gentle breezes, Le Sirenuse Mare is a garden by the sea, a refuge from our hectic modern lifestyle, a breathing space. But it is also, deep in its soul, like the hotel that birthed it, a place of connection.
Viola Parrocchetti, Emporio Sirenuse's creative director, has long been fascinated by the ways in which different corners of southern Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia seem to talk to each other across great gulfs of space and time through the shapes, motifs, colours and patterns of their art and artefacts.
While on a sailing holiday in Greece, Viola found herself ashore in Athens for a few days. During a visit to the Greek capital's sprawling National Archaeological Museum, she became fascinated by the motifs on what is sometimes dismissed as ‘primitive’ Greek pottery from the Protogeometric period – roughly from 1050 to 900 BC, when after the societal collapse of the Late Bronze Age, Greek civilization was forced to retrench and reboot.
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The effect of this in the arts and crafts, especially domestic pottery, was a new simplicity. Decorations consisted of abstract lines on a plain background: circles, waves, parallel lines and forms that were sometimes oddly suggestive: one vase motif “looks vaguely like a stack of coathangers”, Viola remarks, “and another could be a strange bearded warrior”.
She realised that these patterns, originally painted around the body of a vase or pitcher, could be transposed to a flat surface and form the basis for a series of plates and bowls. The first stage was for Viola to create a series of watercolour sketches inspired by the motifs. Then she worked with artisanal Amalfi Coast ceramics firm Vietri Scotto to refine the designs still further for a collection that would become the lunch service of Le Sirenuse Mare Restaurant – but would also be available to purchase from Emporio Sirenuse.
For Viola, the Ànemos collection is a continuation of what she calls her “obsession with distant Mediterranean cultures”. There's another example of this on plain view at Le Sirenuse Mare. The beach club's cushion covers and its linen cabana screens are embroidered with palm tree motifs that Emporio Sirenuse's creative director derived from Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian models. “They had this incredible ability to reduce natural forms to their essence”, she declares, “which makes them universal”.
This sensitivity to the artistic soul of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Silk Route, its unifying style narrative, is something Viola associates strongly with Le Sirenuse's late, great arbiter of style, Franco Sersale.
“He would go on these long voyages to distant lands and come back with textiles and furnishings, or he'd go on a different kind of voyage via antique dealers and auction houses in Italy, London and Paris, and he would create this great cauldron of cultural influences at Le Sirenuse which, because he was a man of exquisite taste, worked perfectly”, she says. “And now his son Antonio has added contemporary art, with the same instinct for what works, but adding new forms and more vibrant colours. I like to take all these inspirations, mix them together, and see what emerges”.
Shop the Ànemos collection at Emporio Sirenuse
Photos 1, 2, 5 © Stefan Giftthaler
Photos 3, 4 © Lauren Bamford; Prop & set stylist Poppy Buntz
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