ALBUS LUMEN

THE PLACES THAT inform each Albus Lumen collection span continents. Being peripatetic is necessary when based in Australia, as Russian-born Marina Afonina is, though she’s been dreaming of other realms since watching Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in La Piscine and going on family holidays when she was young. “Being in Europe, you travelled a lot,” she says. Invoking the holiday mood, where days are uncomplicated and the air is heavy with salt and heat, is the end goal of her pieces in neutral colours and natural textures like linen and Australian sustainably sourced wool. White will always be her base ( albus lumen meaning ‘white light’ in Latin) and she will keep borrowing the hand-hewn feel of terracotta, woven fabrics and ceramics in her pieces, because to her, simplicity is best. “Sometimes you look at the little ceramics and you see a fingerprint of the one who made it. It’s raw perfection.”