A Healdsburg Home Shines with Family Artwork and Textiles from Chile

Gerard Ortiz

Catalina Marin and Rodrigo Maturana have worked tricky to make a household home their a few small children can love—a dwelling that transpires to be hundreds of miles away from the couple’s own extended spouse and children. Catalina and Rodrigo ended up the two lifted in Chile and moved to Sonoma County just about a 10 years in the past for Rodrigo’s job. The household they’ve produced in this article demonstrates equally the background of the couple’s indigenous state and new traditions they’ve fashioned inside of their Sonoma group.

Catalina was elevated in the country’s funds, Santiago, in a relatives of artists and makers. She and Rodrigo satisfied in business enterprise university, and they each and every designed careers in advertising and marketing (Rodrigo in the wine business, Catalina with international firms like L’Oréal and PepsiCo). When the couple settled in Sonoma, they understood they experienced an possibility to redefine the equilibrium in between their do the job and family members life and make a relaxed but layout-forward dwelling that connects the threads of the international life they’ve crafted alongside one another.

Catalina, whose eye for style and design was cultivated by her artist mother, envisioned the family’s home in Healdsburg with a mix of midcentury and modern day pieces, all united by a perception of heritage.

“Your residence has to talk your language,” she claims. “A household without a tale has no soul.”

Catalina Marin in her Healdsburg property. (Eileen Roche)

The couple’s very own tale centers on an appreciation of craft and mother nature: the lamp made by a area buddy from a gourd grown on their farm, seashells and stones collected on Chilean shorelines throughout excursions to go to spouse and children, paintings by their oldest daughter on the walls—and now, hand-loomed pillows and blankets from Catalina’s textile company.

Expanding up, Catalina expended summers camping and driving horses on the rugged coastal island of Chiloé, close to Patagonia, exactly where subsistence traditions of farming and weaving have area households through the seasons. The island displays a wildly attractive landscape of beaches, weathered wooden churches, brightly painted fishing cabins, and lush pastures dotted with sheep. Community artisans weave wool blankets and other textiles to get paid cash flow in the wintertime, when farming and fishing aren’t as fruitful.

Catalina’s small business, TREKO Chile, imports the creations of these rural artisans, preserving conventional sheepshearing, weaving, and dyeing techniques though opening up the magnificence of their craftsmanship to new eyes.

“It’s not just preserving Chilean craft, but the unique traditions of this a single island,” clarifies Catalina. “I’ll check with 1 of our artists, for case in point, ‘How did you make this unique loop,’ and then we may develop a style alongside one another with a thousand of those people identical loops in just one pillow. It’s embracing all of that magnificence that they have in a modern way.”

A holiday meal of do-it-yourself empanadas. (Eileen Roche)
Designer Catalina Marin, proprietor of a Healdsburg business that imports textiles from her native Chile, sets the desk with easy, handthrown ceramics and eucalyptus branches. (Eileen Roche)

1 advantage of the natural wools and dyes utilised in Treko designs is that they are exceptionally resilient and household friendly. At the family’s Healdsburg property, these standard textiles are lived with every single day—and keep up properly with all of the small (and sometimes big) messes that appear together with three kids. There’s an heirloom-good quality wool toss on the back of the sofa and hand-loomed pillows on the beds, all accomplished with a informal treatment that communicates that this is a household household.

“A dwelling simply cannot be a museum,” suggests Catalina. “My kids know they can set their ft up on matters they can bounce on the sofa. It is a resilient residence.”

Older daughter Renata at get the job done on a series of summary portraits. (Eileen Roche)
A black-and-white wool toss from TREKO in the living home. (Eileen Roche)

There are also huge meals all over the dining table, online games of soccer in the yard (both of those Rodrigo and son Santiago, 11, are substantial soccer fans), and finding collectively with the neighbors. “I come to feel that is what we do in Chile,” claims Catalina. “We’re often with our families, and now our friends right here are our spouse and children.”

Barbecues are well known, as are empanada-generating parties where by the couple’s youthful daughter, 9-yearold Catita, can take the lead in kneading the dough and spooning in the filling. At the New Calendar year, Catalina will make pastel de choclo, a casserole of sweet corn, onions, floor beef, and eggs cooked in particular person clay pots for each member of the spouse and children.

Catalina cultivates an appreciation for art with her kids, in the way that her parents did as she was escalating up. “The gift of art is all over the place,” she says, conveying how her grandfather took her hiking, pointing out little aspects in the way the leaves of a plant grew jointly.

The couple’s more mature daughter, Renata, 12, carries on the relatives artistic custom, not too long ago working on a sequence of superbly expressive black-and-white portraits on brown butcher paper that Catalina experienced framed for the corner of the residing space. Catalina keeps all 3 of the young children active with open up-ended artwork jobs and outdoorsy ordeals to go on to foster creative imagination.

“We have different pens, crayons, Legos, scissors all over the place. So it’s all your imagination—it’s like you are building your point,” she says.

“Your household has to communicate your language,” claims designer Catalina Marin. Her home has a concentration on natural components, which include a handcarved wooden vase in the living room. (Eileen Roche)
Son Santi and youthful daughter Catita lounge in the playroom, the place relatives artwork decorates the partitions. (Eileen Roche)

Massive jobs, like repainting a home or hanging a piece of artwork or examining long run patterns for the textile organization, are another way for the spouse and children to be inventive together.

“It’s crucial that they always see us accomplishing jobs and doing the job hard, so they know what it normally takes,” states Catalina.

As her business enterprise grows, Catalina suggests she will get the job done to continue to uncover the balance amongst a chaotic loved ones lifestyle and a inventive, layout-centered 1. She would like to discover Indigenous models from other areas of Chile as properly as different pure supplies like copper and ceramics.

“My desire would be the entire island and diverse areas of the place to be in a position to display what they do,” she states. “But we will need to usually continue to keep our feet on the ground—and keep who we are at coronary heart.”

For more info on Catalina Marin’s line of imported Chilean textiles, pay a visit to trekochile.com.

Like a area

Operator/designer Catalina Marin of the Healdsburg textile firm TREKO Chile enjoys uncovering parts with background as a way to layer texture and artwork in her possess dwelling. Not surprisingly, she’s a major vintage shopper.

In this article are a couple of of her favorite spots:

Antique Culture

This collection of 100-moreover vintage vendors in an Art Deco developing in Sebastopol has a fantastic bakery together with. 2661 Gravenstein Hwy. S., Sebastopol. 707-829-1733, antiquesociety.com

Elsie Eco-friendly

Catalina claims she mourns the reduction of the community brick-and-mortar spot of this exceptional location for housewares and other antiques. Fortunately, there is even now an on the internet shop. elsiegreen.com

Gallery Lulo

Stylish, one particular-of-a-kind jewelry and art pieces for the household, which includes ceramic vases and sensitive wall hangings. Superbly curated, and every single artisan featured has a story to share. 303 Centre St., Healdsburg. 707-433-7533, gallerylulo.com

City Tree Farm

Catalina enjoys checking out the trees, shrubs, and plants at this place nursery. Bonus factors for the likelihood to trip in a golf cart through the 20 acres of shows. 3010 Fulton Rd., Fulton. 707-544-4446, urbantreefarm.com

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